It has been a year and a half since Sora was first previewed and when it was finally released it led to a wave of disappointment. I wrote about Sora when it was previewed and all my predictions, no surprise, turned out to be accurate. It did not take a genius to understand the amount of machine learning, engineering and compute power required to create truly cinematic quality video and realistic images is many years away and even then there is plenty of scope for errors that will always appear. That’s the nature of software.
Anyway, since Sora’s preview a dozen other competitors have tried to steal the limelight - Runway, Luma Dream Machine, Higgsfield, Kling, and also several open source models that can be used with ComfyUI.
Google was obviously not going to be left out and considering the amount of data they have access to (via search engine indexing and YouTube) it was only a matter of time until they showed off their own video generator. Now it has been released and it is called Veo 3 (previous versions went almost unnoticed).
The usual LinkedIn AI guys and hype men you have never heard of outside LinkedIn have called Veo 3 a game changer and, again, claim Hollywood’s days are over and that Veo 3 represents a democratisation of filmmaking - as if digital video cameras aren’t already ubiquitous.
The cameras in almost everyone’s pockets today are far better than the cameras used to shoot The Blair Witch Project but we don’t see thousands of new filmmakers challenging Hollywood’s dominance. Making a film isn’t just about having access to technology.
I decided to put Veo 3 through its paces by signing up for Google’s Ultra plan and cancelling by the end of the first month. It’s still pricey as hell for over $200 but if that’s the price I have to pay to educate others in the creative community who are fearing for their jobs then that’s the price I have to pay.
So the challenge is this : I’m going to test Veo 3 every day for 30 days (or when the monthly credits run out) and each day I’ll summarise the results on LinkedIn.
A friend, David Gerard, who has done extensive commentary over the years debunking cults and scams, is covering the ‘30 Days of Veo 3’ challenge on his YouTube channel. I’ll editing this blog post each week to include his coverage below.