A China-based startup, Sand AI, has launched an overtly licensed video-generating AI mannequin that’s garnered reward from entrepreneurs like Microsoft Analysis Asia founding director Kai-Fu Lee. However Sand AI seems to be censoring photographs which may elevate the ire of Chinese language regulators from the hosted model of the mannequin, in accordance with Trendster’s testing.
Earlier this week, Sand AI introduced Magi-1, a mannequin that generates movies by “autoregressively” predicting sequences of frames. The corporate claims the mannequin can generate high-quality, controllable footage that captures physics extra precisely than rival open fashions.
👀 You gained’t consider that is AI-generated
🧠 You gained’t consider it’s open-source
🎬 You gained’t consider it’s FREEMagi-1 video mannequin simply humiliated business video instruments
Particulars and examples beneath: 👇 pic.twitter.com/zlXRecWeqH
— Farhan (@mhdfaran) April 21, 2025
Magi-1 is simply too impractical to run on most shopper {hardware}. It’s 24 billion parameters in measurement, and requires between 4 and eight Nvidia H100 GPUs to run. (Parameters are the interior variables fashions use to make predictions.) For a lot of customers — this reporter included — Sand AI’s platform is the one place they will check drive Magi-1.
The platform wants a “immediate” picture to kick off video technology. Not all prompts are permissible, Trendster shortly found. Sand AI blocks picture uploads of Xi Jinping, Tiananmen Sq. and Tank Man, the Taiwanese flag, and insignias supporting Hong Kong liberation. Filtering seems to be taking place on the picture stage; renaming picture information didn’t skirt the blocking.
Sand AI isn’t the one Chinese language startup stopping uploads of politically delicate photographs to its video technology device. Hailuo AI, Shanghai-based MiniMax’s generative media platform, blocks pictures of Xi Jinping as nicely. However Sand AI’s filtering seems to be significantly aggressive; Hauiluo permits photographs of Tiananmen Sq..
As Wired defined in a chunk from January, fashions in China are required to comply with stringent info controls. A 2023 regulation forbids fashions from producing content material that “damages the unity of the nation and social concord” — that’s, counters the federal government’s historic and political narratives. To conform, Chinese language startups typically censor their fashions, both via prompt-level filters or fine-tuning.
Apparently, whereas Chinese language fashions have a tendency to dam political speech, they typically have fewer filters than their American counterparts for pornographic content material. 404 just lately reported that various video turbines launched by Chinese language corporations lack primary guardrails that forestall individuals from producing nonconsensual nudity.
