Following Logan Kilpatrick and Noam Shazeer, Tim Broocks today announced that he will be joining Google DeepMind, after his tenure at OpenAI. Interestingly, he was one of the core members behind the company’s video generation platform, Sora.
On X, Brook expressed his excitement to collaborate with Google DeepMind’s talented team on video generation technologies and world simulators. “I will be joining GoogleDeepMind to work on video generation and world simulators! Can’t wait to collaborate with such a talented team,” he posted on X.
He further added that he had a great two years at OpenAI making Sora. In a reply on X, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis welcomed Brooks, saying that he will help to “make the long-standing dream of a world simulator a reality.”
Brook’s departure hit like a ton of bricks as Sora continues to face technical challenges with no official update on its release. As per reports, Sora does not accurately simulate the physics of certain interactions, generating videos that lack adherence to real-world principles.
Google launched its video generation model, Veo, at its annual I/O developer conference. Veo stands out for its ability to maintain consistency across frames using advanced latent diffusion transformers, keeping characters, objects and styles in place, as they would in real life. Veo will soon be integrated into YouTube Shorts, allowing creators to generate backgrounds and six-second clips.
OpenAI is still improving Sora intending to reduce its processing time. However, there is hardly any buzz going on around the same. As per media reports, OpenAI is working towards training an improved Sora that can quickly create clips. Previously, it was said that for a 1-minute clip, Sora took 10 minutes.
Industry experts believe that OpenAI needs to make significant industry partnerships to catch up with its competitors such as Runway and Stability AI, which have made deals with Hollywood studios and directors.
Brooks’ return to Google, where he previously worked on Pixel phones, signals another key loss for OpenAI during a period of accelerated competition in video generation technology.
Going back to the AI roots
Brook’s announcement of his return to Google from OpenAI, is coming in full circles returning to the AI roots.
Recently, Kilpatrick told AIM about how his journey from OpenAI to Google felt like going back to a startup. “When I joined OpenAI, it was a 100-person company, and when I left, it was much larger — about 1,500. In many ways, coming to Google has felt like going back to the roots of that 200 person startup,” said Kilpatrick, stating how Google—despite being big—feels like a startup, housing multiple startups within the organisation.
Prior to Brooks, in September, CTO Mira Murati, Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew, and VP of Research Barret Zoph all announced their departures.
Earlier this year, prominent figures like scientist Andrej Karpathy, co-founder Ilya Sutskever, and former safety leader Jan Leike have also left OpenAI. Besides, Co-founder John Schulman announced his exit in August, and president Greg Brockman is currently on sabbatical.
