In a concerning development for content creators worldwide, OpenAI's promised Media Manager tool, announced in May, has failed to materialize by its projected 2025 launch date. The tool was intended to give creators control over how their copyrighted works are used in AI training.
While OpenAI has rolled out numerous updates including the reasoning model o1, text-to-video service Sora, and Canvas, the company has remained conspicuously silent about Media Manager since its initial announcement.
Industry insiders paint a troubling picture of the tool's development status. According to sources familiar with the matter, Media Manager was never considered a priority project within OpenAI. A former employee revealed to TechCrunch that they couldn't recall anyone actively working on the initiative.
The tool was marketed as a groundbreaking solution that would employ advanced machine learning to identify copyrighted text, images, audio, and video across multiple sources. It promised creators the ability to opt out of having their work used to train AI models like ChatGPT.
The prolonged absence of Media Manager raises questions about OpenAI's commitment to creator rights, particularly as the company faces ongoing lawsuits from creators who discovered their works were used without permission in AI training.
Some industry observers speculate that OpenAI might be deliberately delaying the tool's release. Recent reports suggest the company has encountered difficulties in training next-generation models like GPT-5, potentially due to challenges in accessing high-quality training data.
The situation highlights a broader challenge in AI development: balancing technological advancement with creator rights. Even if Media Manager eventually launches, creators would need to actively flag their copyrighted content, and materials appearing in unchecked corners of the internet might still end up in training datasets.
While regular ChatGPT users can opt out of contributing their data to AI training, content creators continue to wait for the promised protections that Media Manager was supposed to provide.