The Wall Street Journal ran an article in its October 20, 2025, edition that was titled, "Open AI's Sora App Appeals to the Narcissus in Us." Online, minus the reference to Narcissus, the title reads, "What It’s Like When Our AI Selves Are Having All the Fun." The actual link to the article (as seen in a browser search bar) provides a third title: "I Tried The Hot New AI Video App. It Made Me Lonelier Than Ever."
I assume that many of those reading this blog posting know the sad story of Narcissus. For those who might not, here is a brief rundown from Wikipedia:
According to the best-known version of the story in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Narcissus rejected the advances of all women and men who approached him, instead falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. In some versions, he beat his breast purple in agony at being kept apart from this reflected love, and in his place sprouted a flower bearing his name.
The character of Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, a self-centered personality style. This quality in extreme contributes to the definition of narcissistic personality disorder, a psychiatric condition marked by grandiosity, excessive need for attention and admiration, and an impaired ability to empathize.
Despite my temptation to launch from that second paragraph, above, into a commentary on our current president, and the state of our contemporary politics, my point today is different. Sora, I am told (I haven't tried the program, myself) is an AI software program that allows users to place themselves into videos, much as the person apparently galloping away from a train, in the image at the top of this blog posting, has put himself into the scene depicted. That person is "real," but neither the horse nor the train are.
Below, I am copying out what struck me most forcefully in The Journal's article, which I hope readers of this blog posting might be able to access in its entirety. I do have to admit, however, that a paywall erected by Dow Jones could bar non-subscribers:
You spend thousands on travel, then you (or your patient loved ones) spend hours shooting you in front of fountains, glaciers, mountains and ancient ruins, usually surrounded by other people trying to do the same. On a family trip to Key West, the southernmost point of the continental U.S. was so mobbed; we could only take a picture of the mob. Ditto Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid statue.
OpenAI saves us the trips. This tool can put me, myself and I in every video, every situation, no matter how realistic or surreal. You can even share your creations with others on the Sora app, with a TikTok-like interface....
These new forms of entertainment are becoming the lake to our Narcissus: You can gaze into your phone and see yourself staring back, having all kinds of thrills, spills and chills.
This reminded me of another writer, Philip K. Dick, whose short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” became the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger film “Total Recall.” The premise is that you can “remember” a vacation you never took. You could relax on a beach, win a Super Bowl or become an interplanetary spy.
With Sora, you can do exactly that, in 10-second increments. Soon, your phone might be filled with hundreds of fond memories of things that never happened and places you never went, moments you can sit back and “relive” when there’s nobody else around except your AI pals.
Who needs the real world [emphasis added]?
Narcissus ended up thinking that the only thing that counted was him. We are all tempted to come to a similar conclusion about our own importance - and Bob Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues" comes to mind, as a place where this tendency was called out as a major mistake. Let's not forget that lesson from Mr. Dylan. I am presuming that many will remember this song, which comes from the early part of Bob Dylan's songwriting career, but if you don't know the song click that link for the lyrics. Here is the last verse (with emphasis added):
Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody’s having them dreams
Everybody sees themselves
Walkin’ around with no one else
Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that
“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”
I said that
We're in this together. Looking into that AI-assisted forest pool, on the model of Narcissus, will bring us to catastrophe.
I said that!
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