Ovi: Twin backbone cross-modal fusion for audio-video generation
65 comments
·October 22, 2025pavlov
dang
Discussed here:
Wan – Open-source alternative to VEO 3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44928997 - Aug 2025 (38 comments)
cubefox
And Google.
echelon
OpenAI wowed the world with a video model that was also a script writing, editing, dubbing, foley, and music model.
Kling still has the best proprietary video model, but Sora 2 is so smart that you don't need to edit anything if your target is social.
I don't see how Runway, Pika, or the rest of the purely foundation video model startups survive against the giants and the incredible open source Chinese models. They've got to be sweating bullets right now.
Everyone's also sleeping on xAI's high quality and insanely fast video model (10 second generations) that they're giving away completely for free without watermarks.
howardprescot
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eichin
Heh, I used to work for Nokia's Ovi - basically, gsuite for nokia phones (my group did map search) - the official explanation was "Ovi is Finnish for Door", the internal joke was "Ovi is Hungarian for Kindergarten". I couldn't find any backstory about the name here, though.
howardprescot
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crorella
At this rate, in a few months we will have probably some high quality shorts entirely generated by this.
hmokiguess
It's funny you mention this, I was just thinking this other day we may eventually be in a future where a group hangout party could look like this:
1. Goes to friends' place 2. Usual drinks, whatever gets you going activity 3. Each person writes a prompt 4. Chain them together 5. Watch the resulting movie together
That sounds hilarious and I can't wait to try
meonkeys
Lazyweb: Are these related? If so, how?
pavlov
When a new open weights AI model comes out, opportunists register a domain using its name and start hosting it hoping to make a buck with SEO.
Easier than ever now, as AI-assisted coding tools will build you that generic landing page and basic UI.
imiric
If they're actually hosting it and providing a service, that wouldn't be a bad thing. Ovi's Apache license allows commercial use. They would only be infringing on the license by not publishing it and the original copyright, and would be morally bankrupt by not disclosing the original project and passing it off as their own.
But I also suspect that most of these are indeed SEO scammers, that there's no actual service, and that all payments are pocketed. It might take a few days for the scam to be reported and the site taken down, but it's likely enough to get a few hundred bucks out of it. They'll never be pursued because of where they live, and they can have many of these up in no time, thanks to AI, as you say.
What a sad state of affairs that no "AI" company or government is taking seriously.
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marstall
mindblowing - but still in the uncanny valley. and I guess it's cute that many of the characters live in a world where AI has caused an apocolypse, but is that really the message they want to lead with?
doawoo
> but still in the uncanny valley
that and the guitar player behind the singer in the concert example has three arms :)
christophilus
To be fair, a lot of movies in theaters have uncanny valleys. A lot of CGI feels that way to me.
alexpotato
The limits of CGI have gotten so good that if you are noticing the CGI, it's b/c someone skimped on the budget for the particular movie where you saw the uncanny valley.
(Of course, excluding the obvious "that guy just knocked down a building!" CGI)
jsheard
Yeah that's the thing, with good execution of a plausible effect you don't even realize you're looking at CGI. It's the toupée fallacy.
Obligatory Jonas Ussing plug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo&list=PLgdTaHO8FL...
tootie
Kinda terrifying. And it can run in 32GB of VRAM? Anyone with a 5090 can start spewing out believable fake videos.
jonplackett
Yeah and even with the server it’s really cheap - things like omnihuman are I think better but MUCH more expensive to run
aussieguy1234
The other option is to rent a 5090 in the cloud. Probably less than 0.50 per hour at most providers.
amelius
How long until we see blockbuster movies produced by a guy in his basement for <$1000?
dragonwriter
> How long until we see blockbuster movies produced by a guy in his basement for <$1000?
Probably never. If AI is good enough to cover all the skills needed to do what would currently make a blockbuster movie for less than $1000, the demand for movies will be small enough relative to supply that there will be no such thing as a “blockbuster movie”
xmprt
I don't believe that consequence. It's never been easier for someone at home to make short videos - see TikTok and YouTube. In fact most people consume most content on those platforms. Yet there's still high demand for movies and blockbuster movies still happen (usually driven by hype on the aforementioned platforms).
On the other hand, I think the quality of movies and expectations will be a lot higher.
dragonwriter
> It's never been easier for someone at home to make short videos - see TikTok and YouTube. In fact most people consume most content on those platforms. Yet there's still high demand for movies and blockbuster movies still happen
This is obviously true, but I don't see how it relates to the question being discussed. "Short videos" and "blockbuster movies" are clearly widely separated categories, despite both being audiovisual content of some kind.
roarcher
Never. I've seen people instantly go from liking a static image to disliking it upon learning it was AI generated. The same applies to other kinds of media. No matter how "good" it is, knowing that it was created by an unfeeling algorithm ruins it for most people.
jonplackett
I read a while ago that big scientific ideas take about 50 years to be accepted. Which basically means they are never accepted. The people who disagree just get old and die.
Younger generation who grow up with AI will just think it’s normal, like we think being connected to the internet via a rectangle you keep in your pocket is normal.
roarcher
Scientific ideas have the benefit of being objectively true.
AI movies are not a "scientific idea". Liking them is a matter of taste, and there are plenty of things that never catch on.
jcims
New things will be possible that aren’t today. You’ll be able to pick the stars in your movie. The home base can be your childhood home. Your unrequited love can be virtually fulfilled. Etc etc.
dragonwriter
Yes, and none of these hyperpersonal movies will be a blockbuster; they'll be lucky to have audiences requiring the fingers of more than one hand to count, because everyone will have their own hyperpersonal preferences.
roarcher
A "blockbuster movie" implies commercial use. I think actual stars would object to their likeness being used in that way.
If you're talking about people firing up the ol' 5090 to make a "movie" about Taylor Swift falling madly in love with them for, ahem, personal use, I have no doubt that people will do that. And I will do everything in my power to avoid associating with such brain-rotted cretins.
imiric
"Never" is quite short-sighted.
Most people would use these tools for personal use, if nothing else. Seeing a celebrity, themselves, their friends, etc., act out any scenario they can think of is quite an appealing proposition. And porn, of course, for better or worse.
In the long-term, this has the potential to significantly change how media is created and consumed. Feature films produced by large studios will undoubtedly continue to exist, and they will also leverage the technology, but it's not difficult to imagine a new branch of personalized media becoming popular. The tools are practically already there; they just need to become more accessible, and slightly better.
roarcher
Man, am I ever getting tired of replying to the same poorly thought out points over and over again.
> Most people would use these tools for personal use
Not what we're talking about. Not "personalized media", not large studios "leveraging the technology", not "visual effects".
See: "blockbuster movies produced by a guy in his basement for <$1000".
jonwinstanley
This is defo true until the moment it gets so good people can't tell.
roarcher
Gonna be pretty hard to pass off a whole movie as real when none of the "actors" exist.
neom
As with many things of human ideation and creation: If they can't understand distribution, a long time.
heavyset_go
Besides people with weird fetishes, who actually enjoys looking at AI "art"?
ToValueFunfetti
I enjoyed just about everything in here: https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-ton-of-ai-images-ive-mad...
nine_k
Photos, movies, animation, recorded music, computer games, CGI props in movies, CGI characters in movies were all denounced as "not real art", until good counter-examples appeared.
AI is but a tool; if there is an artist using them, real art can be created, as with any other tool.
hirako2000
Photos initially captured poorly but were still more affordable than paying a master painter, animation give life to static images, recordings allow listeners to play music without the need to attend, CGI makes for cheaper or infeasible reproductions. For all the cases where technology was adopted, it improved over what we had.
So far, Ai generated videos, and arguably photos seem to only please wishful thinkers, or untalented artists dreaming to make it.
I don't imply the tech will never get to the tipping point, but it so far provides so little value we are either many years to go, or it just won't happen.
Let's be an optimist. It will eventually get there. I doubt for any of parallels you made billions of people hammered daily by overblown posts about the upcoming revolution.
The reasons for critiques have a lot to do with promotion fatigue. Hyperboles eventually exhaust their impact.
computerphage
I think "blockbuster movie" is a moving target, so it's a bit hard to know
nine_k
It's a relatively well defined measure of success though: a movie which is popular and high-grossing.
jayd16
Unless marketing and the guy's food doesn't count, never. But a "runaway hit for almost nothing"? Not unheard of.
_--__--__
I fully expect that we will see an AI video project that gets to Skibidi Toilet levels of cultural reach within the next two years, but 'blockbluster' implies a level of financial success that is much harder to predict.
mvdtnz
Based on that trailer we're a long, long way away. Ignoring the unsettling facial expressions of the human characters, there is zero visual (or audio) cohesion between the scenes. A full movie of such incoherent visuals would be a difficult watch.
howardprescot
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ingleside
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Seems like the video model is based on Wan2.2.
Lots of activity around Wan lately. It’s nice to see flexible open models make a strong showing against the massively funded closed competitors like OpenAI and Runway.