AI compute and energy
2026-04-26
9 minute read
12 sources
Generative Video AI in 2026: Compute Economics, Hollywood Disruption, and the Copyright Reckoning
Frontier video models now generate 1080p clips in single-digit seconds, training runs cleared USD 100 million per system, and inference still costs cents per output second. The constraint is no longer fidelity but rights, latency, and where the marginal dollar of creative budget lands.
Generative video moved from research demo to production tool over fifteen months. OpenAI shipped Sora 2 in December 2024 with 8 second 1080p clips, Google Veo 2 and Veo 3 added native vertical and longer durations, Runway Gen-4 solved character consistency, and Chinese entrants Kling 2.0 from Kuaishou and Hailuo from MiniMax forced global...