Last week, Luma, an AI startup, shared a series of videos created using its latest video-generating tool, Dream Machine. According to the company, Dream Machine is a "highly scalable and efficient transformer model" that receives direct training from videos. However, an issue arose when viewers noticed that around the 57-second mark, the Dream Machine-generated trailer for Monster Camp, an animated story about furry creatures at a sleepaway camp, featured a slightly altered but still recognizable version of Mike Wazowski from Pixar's Monsters, Inc. People began to question whether the tool was prompted to create animations in a Pixar style or if it was trained using Disney material. Lack of transparency is a significant concern surrounding these models, as Dream Machine is just one among many text-to-video AI tools showcased recently, such as OpenAI's Sora, Google's VideoPoet, and Veo. Luma had marketed its Dream Machine model as the future of filmmaking, promising high-quality, realistic shots simply by inputting prompts into a text box.

By watching videos of cars racing on dissolving highways or awkwardly narrated sci-fi shorts, it's understandable why enthusiastic supporters of this technology quickly hailed it as a groundbreaking innovation. Currently, Luma is encouraging people to sign up and use Dream Machine for free. They also offer "Pro" and other tiered options that incur fees for additional features. We attempted to contact Luma for comment regarding the source of the footage Dream Machine is trained on, but we did not receive a response at the time of publishing.