Everyone could say anything about open source models, but they're comparing themselves to what OpenAI released a year ago. They haven't shown all of their cards yet and they have a decent moat already in place; some say they have no moat, I disagree, they have one of the best moats possible which is brand awareness.
Sora on its own could bring in billions in revenue; an open-source Sora will take at least another year, if not two, to come out. Then more time until it can run on commodity hardware. An open source model that only runs in a dedicated H100 is actually less useful than a closed model behind an API call; not to detract from open source, I think it's the way to go but I'm just being pragmatic and realistic. There's a reason why MS Office is still the top productivity app in the world, even though dozens of open source alternatives exist.
> they have one of the best moats possible which is brand awareness.
Do they though?
If you talk to "regular people", everybody knows ChatGPT, but nobody knows or cares about OpenAI. And most of them don‘t even really know that name. They call it ChatUuuuhm, ChatThingy, Chad Gippity, or similar.
I think they will just switch, when something better comes along.
MS had yet to fully stabilize that lead a full decade after they had won the os platform standard for ibm compatible pcs. A platform standard moat goes way way beyond a brand advantage.
Azure, while significant, has no similar monopoly to support OpenAI. Do you really see a structural advantage to openAI beyond the Microsoft products integrating it?
Everyone could say anything about open source models, but they're comparing themselves to what OpenAI released a year ago. They haven't shown all of their cards yet and they have a decent moat already in place; some say they have no moat, I disagree, they have one of the best moats possible which is brand awareness.
Sora on its own could bring in billions in revenue; an open-source Sora will take at least another year, if not two, to come out. Then more time until it can run on commodity hardware. An open source model that only runs in a dedicated H100 is actually less useful than a closed model behind an API call; not to detract from open source, I think it's the way to go but I'm just being pragmatic and realistic. There's a reason why MS Office is still the top productivity app in the world, even though dozens of open source alternatives exist.