If you’re one of the many folks having fun with OpenAI’s Sora video generation, you may also be willing to pay for it. That’s the thinking over at the AI company’s headquarters, which will soon begin charging users for additional generations. It’s not cheap, either, particularly if you’re South African.

According to Sora’s head, Bill Peebles, users looking to generate more videos in a day will have to pay for that option. An additional ten videos will cost R70 ($4) and can be purchased through the service’s iOS app.

Sora about that

That’s a little steep if you’re South African, but it does work out to seven bucks per video. Users, both free and premium, will have to get used to paying for access to the video-generating service, however. Currently, paid users get 100 free video generations a day. Free users have a not-insubstantial 30 videos a day at their command. It’s too bad that the number will drop.

According to Peebles, the company will eventually “need to bring the free gens down to accommodate growth (we won’t have enough gpus to do it otherwise!), but we’ll be transparent as it happens.” The drop will probably happen after a significant number of users have built their AI slop social media presence to the point where they’ll see a drop in interactions unless they fork over some cash to OpenAI’s accountants.

There are also plans afoot to let “rightsholders” license likenesses and characters for use in Sora. “We imagine a world where rightsholders have the option to charge extra for cameos of beloved characters and people,” said Peebles, opening the door to video creation with whichever intellectual property has been sucked dry of all other revenue options. We can’t wait.