"There are too many famous teachers, who should I learn Sora from?" is becoming a major concern for a large number of people who are anxious about AI.
Sora is a human-generated video tool released by Open AI in the early morning of February 16. Compared with other similar products, the videos generated by Sora are up to 60 seconds long, 1080P high-quality videos, which contain detailed and complex scenes, vivid character expressions, and complex camera movements, which are infinitely close to the real world.
In the past year,AI TechnologyThe breakthrough progress of AI has brought new opportunities. It is considered to be a new productivity tool, which has the potential to replace part of human work in many fields such as marketing, copywriting planning, and intelligent customer service.
Many people are worried that their jobs will be replaced by AI. The anxiety of ordinary people has become a way for a group of people to get rich. Paid courses of sora/AI can be seen everywhere on Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Video Number, and Knowledge Planet.
The most representative are the so-called "AI giants"Li YizhouAccording to FeiGua data, its AI course "Everyone's Artificial Intelligence Course" sold about 250,000 sets in one year, with sales of about 50 million.
After Sora became popular, a knowledge blogger started to set up a community to attract new members. In just two days, 60 WeChat groups were full. A screenshot circulated online showed that an institution had sold more than 20,000 Sora training courses priced at 99 yuan, earning 2 million yuan in revenue in just one day.
up to dateAccording to the news, the WeChat applet "Yizhou Yike" used by Li Yizhou to sell AI courses has been suspended, and Li Yizhou's artificial intelligence courses have been removed from the WeChat video account window. At the same time, Li Yizhou's personal video account has been banned. Another blogger, "Teacher He Talks about Economics", has also been banned.
But this does not affect other people who are taking advantage of Sora's popularity to sell AI anxiety and continue to sell courses. For them, every opportunity to reap the rewards must be seized.
"Li Yizhou and others" were blocked and the courses were removed from the shelves
Li Yizhou, who claims to be a PhD from Tsinghua University, has recently been at the center of public controversy.
On February 22, the WeChat mini program "Yizhou Yike" used by Li Yizhou to sell AI courses was suspended due to violation of the "Interim Provisions on the Development and Management of Public Information Services of Instant Messaging Tools". Li Yizhou's artificial intelligence courses were removed from the WeChat video account window. At the same time, Li Yizhou's personal video account is now banned from being followed. However, his official video account "Li Yizhou AI" can still be followed.
Another blogger named "Teacher He Talks about Economics" has also been banned from following his video account. According to reports, as of July 4 last year, on the Douyin platform alone, the price of "Everyone's Required Artificial Intelligence Enlightenment Course" recommended by Teacher He was 199 yuan. As of July 4, it had been sold more than 3,400 times, with a total sales amount of about 670,000 yuan.
Caption: Screenshots of the video accounts of “Li Yizhou” and “Teacher He Talks about Economics”.
Li Yizhou and "Teacher He Talks about Economics" are considered well-known bloggers in the field of knowledge payment. On Douyin alone, the two accounts of Li Yizhou and "Li Yizhou AI" have 3.32 million and 1.208 million followers respectively, while "Teacher He Talks about Economics" has 7.778 million followers.
The continuous iteration of big model technology has made workers who are worried about being replaced by AI anxious. "I want to learn about AI, even though I may not need it for the time being" is the psychological portrayal of most users who purchase AI training courses. This has become a money-making tool for people like Li Yizhou.
Zhang Xiao, a designer who graduated from a double-first-class university in China, once spent 199 yuan to buy Li Yizhou's course. She originally wanted to learn about prompt words in depth and try different large model products to see which one is better, but later found that they were all the most basic operations and there was no useful content.
Most of Li Yizhou's live broadcasts are recorded. In order to let users place orders quickly, the live broadcast room always tells you that there are 5 minutes left before the broadcast ends, and there is one last spot, but in fact, Li Yizhou is still live broadcasting an hour later. Some consumers even said on social platforms that every time they see his live broadcast, he will say that it is the last day 199.
A course of 199 yuan can get 1.1 million computing power. Computing power is a unit of measurement for the large model website "Yizhou Intelligence" created by Li Yizhou. Yizhou Intelligence is a website similar to Hao123 that brings together various large models at home and abroad. Using large models consumes computing power.
Tech Planet found that if you don't buy the course, ordinary users can get 10 computing power by registering. It sounds very affordable, but in fact, it consumes 10,000 computing power for each graph. But it doesn't matter, users can buy computing power by becoming members. Members are divided into four levels: amber, gold, platinum, and diamond, and the prices are 39, 99, 159, and 399 yuan per month. In this way, users can continue to pay.
Li Yizhou’s “Everyone’s Artificial Intelligence Class”, priced at 199 yuan, has a total of 39 lessons and lasts less than 4 hours. It introduces what Token is, what ChatGPT is, what artificial intelligence is, how to use ChatGPT to modify a resume, and how to tutor children.
Overall, Li Yizhou's course seemed superficial, more like a re-processing of what technology companies had said at press conferences. For example, Li Yizhou said that big models can be used in intelligent customer service, intelligent writing, intelligent operations, and intelligent sales, thereby helping companies reduce costs and increase efficiency, but in fact, technology companies have mentioned this at many big model press conferences.
In other words, Li Yizhou's course may be more suitable for those who know nothing about large models, and can be used as a guide, but it is obviously not enough for in-depth learning.
A user who purchased Li Yizhou's course told Tech Planet that this kind of course is useless. Does anyone really expect to make money by making AI graphics, text and videos? In fact, there are also restrictions on the traffic of purely AI-generated content on video platforms.
Another big V blogger, Mr. He, launched the "Artificial Intelligence Enlightenment Course for Everyone", which is priced the same as Li Yizhou's. However, the feedback from users who bought Mr. He's course was not ideal. On the social platform, some users said that Mr. He did not have any technology, but just taught you how to use ChatGPT, and he could not explain it clearly.
More people are still making money by selling anxiety
Li Yizhou and "Teacher He Talks about Economics" are just some of the bloggers who are making money by taking advantage of people's anxiety.
Prompt words are the most important tool for communicating with the big model. Asking questions may lead to completely different answers. Baidu founder Robin Li once said that in 10 years, the work of 50% in the world will be prompt word engineering.
On the second day after Sora was released, a blogger sold the "Sora Exclusive Prompt Words Course" at a limited time special price of 999 yuan, which was originally priced at 2,999 yuan. Immediately, some bloggers came out to refute, saying that Sora has not been officially released yet, and the courses are basically just for profit, so you should be cautious before paying the money.
However, this does not affect the paid knowledge bloggers who make use of Sora's name to reap profits.
A person who is responsible for attracting new members for knowledge bloggers told Tech Planet that they had filled 60 groups in just two days. There is no commission for attracting new members, but he can get a commission of 200 yuan for selling a 499 yuan course. "It's quite generous," he added.
The gimmick they used to attract new members was that the Sora beta application channel was open, and they could tell users how to apply for the beta. But in fact, the recruitment of Sora's red team members (i.e. early beta members) for the beta test was opened on December 16 last year, and experts from all over the world were invited. Open AI said that they would give priority to geographical and field diversity in the selection process.
An entrepreneur in the large model industry said that the application for internal beta recruitment ended on December 31, 2023. An unconfirmed information shows that about 1,000 people have obtained internal beta qualifications.
The community is the seed user. After joining the group, there will be a dedicated operator to share the live link, and students will share how they got the results through this course. Every day, there will always be users who will place orders for courses.
Searching for Sora on the Knowledge Planet shows 40 relevant results, of which 13 require payment to join, ranging from tens to hundreds of yuan. The content shared by those planets that require payment includes AIGC information, how to use Sora, how to make money, how to train a Sora model, etc. These contents can either be directly searched on the Internet or are not practical at all.
According to Jiemian News, many planets were recently established, with over 100 members and an estimated current revenue of nearly 10,000 yuan. However, on the afternoon of February 22, when users searched for Sora on the Knowledge Planet, no relevant content was found.
Some even directly said that they could provide access to Sora. This situation forced Open AI to come out and clarify that it has not launched access to Sora, and if users see posts talking about this/providing access, it is either sarcasm or a scam.
But not many people heard this voice, and those who were anxious about the uncertainty of the future still chose to buy courses.
AI courses are generally of little practical value
Every time a new technology emerges, people who sell courses will be the first to reap the benefits. Previously, some people made millions a month by using ChatGPT, and now some people make hundreds of millions in three years by selling courses. They take advantage of all the hot topics on the Internet, but they can’t actually bring more in-depth thinking to ordinary people.
Ordinary people should understand that this kind of blind anxiety is actually useless. It is impossible to learn AI by just taking a course that costs a few hundred yuan. It is even more of a pipe dream to want to make a lot of money.
If Li Yizhou's AI course is not valuable enough, then others who directly sell Sora-related courses are even more unscrupulous in the matter of cutting leeks.
Tech Planet bought a widely circulated "Sora Wensheng Video" tutorial on Xianyu, which was originally priced at 365 yuan and is now priced at 99 yuan. It contains two domestic supporting programs and two documents. The two supporting programs are AI Image Video and AI Wensheng Video Tools developed by domestic developers. Both programs can be downloaded for free in the App Store.
The documents respectively introduce how to make money with Sora and how to obtain Sora internal testing qualifications. The former is exactly the same as the publicly available methods circulated on social platforms, including selling accounts or invitation codes, selling prompt words for high-quality generated videos, making AI videos, using Sora-generated videos as accounts, uploading videos to major websites to make money, and Sora knowledge payment. The full text is only 1,200 words, and basically each method is expanded and has no practical significance. The internal testing qualifications have been mentioned in the previous article, and ordinary users are unlikely to obtain them.
In other words, this material is almost worthless. In the other course, it is full of links to Sora's official introduction and media reports.
In fact, many AI courses on the market are just introductory science courses, and you can find a lot of content by searching. To put it another way, learning AI thoroughly itself has a very high threshold, including calculus, linear algebra, probability,OptimalYou need to have knowledge of chemistry, Python, machine learning algorithms, deep learning algorithms, etc. For ordinary people, what is more important is to be able to use AI.
This requires constant learning and practice on a daily basis. The answers you get from asking questions and not asking questions may be quite different. In other words, instead of wasting time and money on courses that are designed to make you lose money, it is better to open the big model tool and start a conversation with AI.