OpenArt's AI 'Brain Rot' Video Tool Launched by Ex-Googlers
The digital landscape is increasingly populated by a peculiar genre of AI-generated content often dubbed “brain rot” videos. These surreal, often nonsensical clips, featuring bizarre characters like a shark in sneakers or a ballerina with a cappuccino for a head, are rapidly gaining traction, particularly among younger audiences. At the forefront of this burgeoning trend is OpenArt, a startup founded in 2022 by two former Google employees, which currently boasts approximately 3 million monthly active users.
OpenArt recently unveiled its “one-click story” feature in open beta, a tool designed to democratize video creation. Users can simply input a single sentence, a script, or even an entire song, and the platform will automatically generate a one-minute video complete with a narrative arc. The versatility of this feature is broad, spanning from light-hearted, viral content suitable for platforms like TikTok, to more serious applications such as explainer videos or music videos for YouTube, and even commercial advertising.
The “one-click story” offers three distinct templates: Character Vlog, Music Video, or Explainer. For a character vlog, users begin by uploading an image of their chosen character and providing a text prompt. If a song is uploaded, the software intelligently analyzes the lyrics and creates an animation that visually aligns with the song’s themes, such as depicting flowers blooming in a garden if the lyrics suggest it. The platform also allows for granular control; users can fine-tune individual clips by revisiting the editor’s storyboard mode and adjusting prompts to achieve a more refined outcome. OpenArt integrates over 50 different AI models, giving users the flexibility to select their preferred tools from a robust suite including DALLE-3, GPT, Imagen, Flux Kontext, and Stable Diffusion. The overarching goal behind this new feature is to significantly lower the barrier for aspiring AI creators, making this immensely popular medium more accessible despite ongoing controversies surrounding its development and use.
While such video generation tools offer clear benefits, enabling rapid content production with original characters and narratives, their proliferation also raises numerous ethical and legal questions. These concerns include the imitation of other artists’ styles, intellectual property rights, and the potential for misuse in generating misinformation. A notable area of concern for OpenArt’s Character Vlog option, for instance, is the type of characters it can generate. During testing, it was observed that the platform could produce content featuring well-known copyrighted characters such as Pikachu, SpongeBob, and Super Mario, which could lead to significant intellectual property (IP) infringement risks. This issue gained prominence in June when Disney and Universal jointly sued AI firm Midjourney over similar AI-generated images.
Users leveraging these tools must be acutely aware of the potential legal ramifications. Should their videos be found to infringe upon another’s copyright, the content may be removed from social media platforms, and the user, if deemed to have contributed to the infringement, could face legal action from the copyright holder under copyright law. OpenArt co-founder and CEO, Coco Mao, addressed these concerns, stating, “We try to be cautious around the IP infringement. When you upload some IP characters, by default, the models we use will reject them, and it’s not able to produce the IP character, but sometimes it slips.” Mao further indicated the company’s willingness to engage with major IP holders to secure necessary character licenses.
A key differentiator OpenArt highlights is its ability to maintain character consistency throughout a video. Unlike many video models that often produce standalone clips requiring users to manually piece them into a cohesive story, OpenArt strives to ensure visual and narrative continuity. Mao emphasized, “A problem that a lot of AI couldn’t really handle well is to have the character consistent in the same video…If you don’t have the same character, then it’s hard to get immersed in the story.” Looking ahead, OpenArt plans to enhance its one-click feature by enabling conversations between two different characters within videos and is also developing a dedicated mobile application.
OpenArt operates on a credit-based system, offering several subscription plans. The most basic plan, priced at $14 per month, provides 4,000 credits, encompassing up to four One-Click stories, 40 videos, 4,000 images, and four unique characters. An advanced plan at $30 per month offers 12,000 credits and up to 12 One-Click stories, while the Infinite plan, at $56 per month, includes 24,000 credits. A team plan is also available for $35 per member per month. To date, OpenArt has secured $5 million in funding from Basis Set Ventures and DCM Ventures. The company reports positive cash flow and is on track to achieve an annual revenue rate exceeding $20 million, underscoring its rapid growth in the dynamic AI content creation market.