Mark Cuban Just Invited Everyone to Deepfake Him on Sora and It’s Really Quite Brilliant

Yesterday, Mark Cuban told his followers on Threads, “For those of you on Sora, my Cameos are open. Have at it.” At first, it sounded like a joke. Why would Cuban want people making weird videos of him saying all sorts of crazy things? Or, worse, why would he want to be dropped into potentially political or otherwise controversial videos?

But if you stop and think about it, what Cuban just did was actually quite brilliant. He wasn’t just giving people permission to make AI videos of him—he was making a statement about what it means to live in a world where artificial intelligence is no longer an experiment. Cuban seems to believe AI may be the single most essential tool moving forward, and we should all spend as much time as possible learning how to use it well.

The deepfake invitation

As I’m sure you know, OpenAI’s Sora is having a viral moment. According to the company, it reached a million downloads in just five days, more quickly than even ChatGPT back in 2022. It’s still the number one app in the iOS App Store.

At the same time, the app’s rise has reignited long-running debates about copyright and the ethics of generative media. Artists and filmmakers have accused OpenAI of training Sora on copyrighted video without permission. Some studios have even suggested the tool amounts to digital theft—using the creative work of others to produce content that could compete with it. OpenAI, for its part, seems to have been caught off guard by how controversial it has become.

That’s the context for Cuban’s invitation. While a lot of celebrities and IP owners have hired lawyers to protect their likenesses from AI manipulation, Cuban leaned into it. “My Cameos are open,” he said, framing his digital image as a kind of public sandbox. In other words: go ahead and try it.

AI as the most important skill

It’s a bold move, but it fits with Cuban’s long-held philosophy about technology. He’s said on a number of occasions that the biggest mistake you can make right now—whether you’re a student, a business owner, or a creator—is sitting on the sidelines.

“If I was 16, 18, 20, 21 starting today,” he said earlier this year, “I would spend every waking minute learning about AI. Even if I am sleeping, I am listening to podcasts talking about AI.”

That’s not hyperbole. It’s an intentional strategy, and it gets to why Cuban’s invitation is so smart. If you want to get people to spend all their time with something, you have to make it worth it. Or, at a minimum, you have to make it fun.

It’s sort of like a calculated dare. By telling people to “have at it,” he’s acknowledging that there are real risks, but he’s also forcing people to ask the question: “What’s the responsible way to explore this new creative power?”

Ignoring it won’t make it safer. On the other hand, engaging with it with some measure of humor might.

Experimentation is the point

Cuban has argued for years that AI isn’t just another wave of technology. It’s the wave—the one that will separate people who thrive in the next decade from those who don’t. “There are two types of companies in the world,” he says. “Those that are great at AI, and everybody else.”

The same could be said for people. He isn’t telling everyone to become AI researchers or build the next ChatGPT. He’s telling them to experiment—to play with the tools, learn their limits, and figure out how to make them useful.

AI, he likes to remind people, “is never the answer—it’s the tool.” What matters is how creatively you use it.

So when he invites the internet to “deepfake” him on Sora, he’s modeling exactly that mindset. He’s saying: don’t be afraid of it. Don’t moralize about it before you understand it. Try it out. Break things. See what happens.

The risk in the lesson

There’s an obvious risk here. An app that makes it this easy to make deepfakes is controversial for good reason. It blurs the line between entertainment and deception, and they do it based on what others created. Public figures have every reason to protect their image, particularly as AI-generated media becomes harder to distinguish from reality.

Cuban’s move flips that fear on its head. By giving permission, he removes the taboo. If people are going to make deepfakes anyway—and they are—then he might as well be the one to turn it into a teachable moment.

That’s what makes it brilliant. It’s not about Cuban himself; it’s about how everyone else responds. The more people experiment, the faster we’ll uncover the limits and possibilities of AI video tools like Sora. That’s why Cuban’s invitation matters. It’s a message to the next generation: don’t just watch what AI can do. Do something with it.