A China-based startup, Sand AI, has launched an brazenly 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 that may increase the ire of Chinese language regulators from the hosted model of the mannequin, in response to TechCrunch’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 under: 👇 pic.twitter.com/zlXRecWeqH
— Farhan (@mhdfaran) April 21, 2025
Magi-1 is just too impractical to run on most client {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’ll check drive Magi-1.
The platform wants a “immediate” picture to kick off video era. Not all prompts are permissible, TechCrunch 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 recordsdata didn’t skirt the blocking.
Sand AI isn’t the one Chinese language startup stopping uploads of politically delicate photographs to its video era device. Hailuo AI, Shanghai-based MiniMax’s generative media platform, blocks images of Xi Jinping as nicely. However Sand AI’s filtering seems to be notably aggressive; Hauiluo permits photographs of Tiananmen Sq..
As Wired defined in a chunk from January, fashions in China are required to observe 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 usually censor their fashions, both by prompt-level filters or fine-tuning.
Curiously, whereas Chinese language fashions have a tendency to dam political speech, they usually have fewer filters than their American counterparts for pornographic content material. 404 just lately reported that a lot of video mills launched by Chinese language corporations lack fundamental guardrails that forestall individuals from producing nonconsensual nudity.
