Although OpenAI introduced Sora in February, the video synthesis tool has not yet been available to the public.

The brand film narrates the story of Toys "R" Us founder Charles Lazarus through AI-generated video clips.

The video, which can be seen here is better than earlier examples of Sora’s work but it is also less complex.

In the video, viewers see a child version of Lazarus, presumably generated using Sora, falling asleep and dreaming that he is soaring through a land of toys. Along the journey, he encounters Geoffery, the store's mascot, who presents the child with a small red car.

Many of the scenes retain clear characteristics of AI-generated imagery, such as unnatural movement, peculiar visual artefacts, and the irregular shape of eyeglasses.

While it did not need actors or cameras, it seems to have had a lot of post-production work to assemble. It still required human scriptwriters and VFX artists to compensate for the AI model's limitations.

Some corrective VFX and an original music score composed by Aaron Marsh of the renowned indie rock band Copeland," Toys "R" Us stated in a press release.

However, the commercial has drawn criticism. Comedy writer Mike Drucker encapsulated several of these criticisms in one post, writing: "Love this commercial is like, 'Toys R Us started with the dream of a little boy who wanted to share his imagination with the world. And to show how, we fired our artists and dried Lake Superior using a server farm to generate what that would look like in Stephen King's nightmares.'"

Other critical comments were more direct. Filmmaker Joe Russo posted: "TOYS 'R US released an AI commercial, and it was extremely disappointing."