OpenAI will shut down its AI video-generation app, Sora, the company announced Tuesday.
“We’re saying goodbye to Sora,” OpenAI wrote on X. “We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.”
The move comes as OpenAI focuses on more profitable AI areas, like coding, text generation, and robotics, ahead of a planned stock market debut later this year.
Sora launched in 2024 and allowed users to turn simple text prompts into videos. Its second version, released last September, added audio and more realistic physics. The app quickly topped Apple’s iOS App Store in the Photo and Video category. Users created videos featuring characters like Lara Croft, Mario, and Pikachu, raising concerns about copyright, deepfakes, and misinformation.
“Sora was quietly a content moderation nightmare,” said Alon Yamin, CEO of Copyleaks. “Harmful deepfakes and manipulated media will just migrate to platforms that are even more opaque and difficult to audit.”
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The shutdown also ends a planned deal with The Walt Disney Company. Disney had agreed to license more than 200 characters to Sora and invest $1 billion in OpenAI. A Disney spokesperson said: “We respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere. We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it.”
OpenAI said other AI tools, including image generation in ChatGPT, will continue. The company plans to use Sora’s technology to train robots for real-world tasks.
“To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you,” OpenAI wrote. “What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing.”