OpenAI’s Sora 2 Generates Realistic Videos of People Shoplifting
“Every defense attorney now has a pre-written motion when it comes to video evidence, I see.”
OpenAI has released a new smartphone app — currently invite-only — designed to rival TikTok with an infinite barrage of AI slop.
The app accompanies the company’s latest text-to-video and audio AI generator, Sora 2, which it claims is “more physically accurate, realistic, and more controllable than prior systems.”
A two-minute clip celebrating the announcement was met with predominantly negative reactions, with netizens dismissing it as “unsettling” and “soulless.”
Worse yet, facilitating the AI generation of photorealistic videos could have some concerning implications, especially when it comes to impersonation.
Ironically, OpenAI’s own Sora developer, Gabriel Petersson, demonstrated how easy it was to generate CCTV footage of anyone — in this case, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — “stealing [graphics cards] at Target.”
The clip shows Altman getting caught by a nearby security guard after trying to walk out of a store with a GPU box — a gag meant to poke fun at the company’s frantic multibillion-dollar bids to secure AI hardware. Specialized AI hardware has become an extremely hot commodity, with AI chipmaker Nvidia announcing a $100 billion partnership with OpenAI just last week.
But the light ribbing of a tech executive aside, the video paints a dystopian picture of a future where anybody could easily be framed for a crime they didn’t commit.
People were quick to point out that Petersson’s gaffe — which was followed by several other videos of Altman sleeping in an office chair, or making people dance on a train platform — felt tone-deaf.
“OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this,” Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell posted on Bluesky.
“Every defense attorney now has a pre-written motion when it comes to video evidence, I see,” another user commented.
We’ve already seen instances of law enforcement using AI-powered facial recognition to identify perpetrators, despite glaring inaccuracies in the tech.
As WaPo reported earlier this year, officers in St. Louis used the tech to build a case against an innocent 29-year-old father of four after he was identified by an AI app, despite being warned that it “should not be used as the sole basis for any decision.” While the case was eventually dismissed, experts warn that it could set a worrying precedent.
The use of AI apps to generate transcripts of body cam videos has also raised concerns that the tech could exacerbate existing problems in law enforcement, including racism and sexism.
Now, with the advent of powerful text-to-video AI generators, like Sora 2, it’s becoming even easier to place a target at a crime scene they never visited.
For its part, OpenAI claims that its new app’s “cameo” feature — which allows you to “drop yourself straight into any Sora scene” — will protect regular people from having their appearance show up in AI-generated videos.
“With cameos, you are in control of your likeness end-to-end with Sora,” the company’s announcement reads. “Only you decide who can use your cameo, and you can revoke access or remove any video that includes it at any time.”
“Videos containing cameos of you, including drafts created by other people, are viewable by you at any time,” OpenAI promised.
The company also said that it’s taking “measures to block depictions of public figures” (whether Altman consented to Petersson’s videos remains unclear) and that “every video, profile, and comment can be reported for abuse, with clear recourse when policies are violated.”
It’s too early to tell how all of this will play out. But the sheer fact that the company’s own employees are already demonstrating how easy it is to generate fake videos of innocent people committing crimes doesn’t bode well.
OpenAI has already struggled greatly to implement effective guardrails when it comes to its large language models. It remains to be seen whether Sora will be any different in that respect.
How a long day in Target exposed an Indian tourist’s Rs 1.1 lakh shoplifting attempt
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How a long day in Target exposed an Indian tourist’s Rs 1.1 lakh shoplifting attempt
An Indian tourist’s day-long visit to a Target store in Illinois turned into a public spectacle when she was caught trying to leave with unpaid goods worth over Rs 1.1 lakh. Store staff tracked her suspicious behaviour for hours before stopping her at the exit. A viral police video shows her pleading to pay but being told it was too late. She now faces felony charges that could affect her visa and her ability to return to the US.
What gave her away wasn’t one big slip but hours of small ones. A woman walks into a Target in Illinois, wanders from aisle to aisle, checking her phone, picking up hundreds of items, slipping tags off as she goes. She’s there for over seven hours. The longer she stays, the more she draws attention.
A staff member explains in the police video, “We saw this woman roaming around the store for the last 7 hours. She was picking up items, checking her phone, moving between aisles, and eventually tried to walk out the west gate without paying.”
Security had been watching her. She made her way past the tills, bags full. But Target employees had already called the police.
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Stopped before she could slip away
Crossing the first exit was the final mistake. CCTV caught her with three stuffed reusable bags. A staff member tells the officer, “She’s taken a ton of merchandise, different kinds. We’re getting a total right now for you. It’ll be over 500 for sure.” The woman, standing next to them, chimes in: “It will be more.”
By the time the police arrived, she was in a back room trying to explain herself. The bodycam footage, uploaded by @BodyCamEdition, shows her desperate to fix it there and then.
“Why can’t I just pay for it?” she asks.
The officer doesn’t budge. “We’re way, way, way past that. You committed a felony.”
She tries to reason: “But if I am paying for it, what’s the harm?”
The officer replies, “It would have been fine if you didn’t leave, right? You would have had that opportunity to pay. But because you left the store at that point, you chose to not pay for it, and we can’t go back.”
They check her ID but can’t find her name online. She says she doesn’t have her passport. She tries giving a different name — Jamisha, not Anya. The officer points out the obvious: “Are you allowed to steal things in India? I did not think so.”
By then, they know she removed tags from 767 items.
Caught red-handed, facing consequences
Legal trouble for her doesn’t end at the store’s door. Immigration lawyer Alen Takhsh explains what this really means: “Regardless, this is a Crime Involving Moral Turpitude, namely one that involves dishonesty and could have serious consequences. If you are in the US on a student visa, an arrest for shoplifting, let alone a conviction, could result in your visa being revoked. If you are in the US on a visitor or work visa, it could lead to you not being allowed to re-enter the US in the future.”
The video has clocked up over 835,000 views and set off fierce debate. Some say maybe she didn’t understand how serious it was. Others think there’s no excuse. Either way, seven hours inside a store with 767 unpaid items was always going to end with the same question at the exit: “Receipt, please?”
Internet Turns Tourist From India, Who Allegedly Spent 7 Hours Shoplifting at Target, Into an Icon and Meme
Jimisha Avlani has become an icon on TikTok after body cam footage of her allegedly shoplifting for hours goes viral
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Screenshot: YouTube (Body Cam Footage)
The internet, in its infinite unseriousness, has once again struck comedic gold. This time, the Meme Queen is Jimisha Avlani, a tourist from India who’s become a TikTok sensation after bodycam footage of her police questioning went viral. In the video, cheeky police officers accuse Avlani of a seven-hour, $1,300 Target shopping spree (without the “paying” part) while our Meme Queen repeatedly insists she didn’t mind settling up. As predicted, hilarity ensued as her unrelenting words and innocent face became entertainment.
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The viral video was uploaded to Body Cam Edition, a channel on Youtube that uploads police body cam footage, and has been viewed over 1 million times in the last ten days. In the video, Avlani stresses that she does not want to be taken to the police station, fearing the embarrassment it will bring her. Unfortunately for Avlani, she was correct in knowing that many people would hear about what she did, and the internet can never be serious.
However, what might surprise Avlani is that most of the internet is on her side because of how funny people found the video. Creators on TikTok have ranked the funniest moments in the footage and even gone out of their way to create skits, make edits of Avlani and create A1 movies.
She has been crowned a Diva
In one edit that has gone viral on TikTok, the comments are filled with supporters of Avlani who express that she has done nothing wrong.
“Free my diva she did nothing wrong,” wrote one user in the comments.
“God forbid a girl forgetting her wallet in the car,” commented another user with an eye roll emoji.
Funniest Moments
In another video, a TikTok creator made a ranking of the funniest moments in the interactions between Avlani and the police. Like the fact that at one moment Avlani pointed out that she had taken more merchandise than the security’s $500 estimation.
Defense Lawyer
“We need more honest people in the world like her,” says this TikTok creator who makes a defense case for Avlani.
“Like why can’t a woman have hobbies?? She should be allowed to leave the store with an item or 2,” wrote another user in the comments.
Memeified
Other users have taken Avlani’s plea to pay for the items and turned them into memes of relatable situations for themselves. For example, one creator compared it to being caught not paying for the subway in New York.
Even though the internet has turned Avlani into an icon, she still faces a felony retail theft charge as the value of the items she stole “surpassed Illinois’s $300 threshold.”
The US Embassy in India also released a statement on X, formerly Twitter, in regards to the incident that reads:
“Committing assault, theft, or burglary in the United States won’t just cause you legal issues—it could lead to your visa being revoked and make you ineligible for future U.S. visas. The United States values law and order and expects foreign visitors to follow all U.S laws.”
There has not yet been a verdict about what will happen to Avlani, but if it were to come under TikTok’s jurisdiction, she would definitely be walking free.
