OpenAI’s Sora was the worst app for your phone — now it’s shutting down

OpenAI announced on Tuesday that it is to close Sora, TikTok’s public app he started six months ago. OpenAI did not give a reason for the suspension, nor did it share details on when it will officially be suspended.

When Sora first opened as an invite-only social network, it seemed like everyone was clamoring to be invited. But if Meta Horizon World – the company’s most famous platform – which is also in danger despite being so important to the company, Sora had no energy left. While Sora 2’s introductory video and audio are impressive, there wasn’t much focus on the AI ​​food itself.

Sora was designed to work as an AI-first TikTok, creating a visually stunning stand-up video experience. Its popular features, “cameos,” allow people to look at their faces and create their own reality. These “cameras” can be revealed, allowing anyone to make their own “cameo” videos. (Cameo took OpenAI to court over the trademark and won, forcing the company to change it to “letters“)

As a result that surprised no one, this venerable deepfake app was amazing as hell.

At launch, Sora felt like a little bomb shelter Sam Altman’s horror videos. I will never be the same again after watching the reality show of the CEO of OpenAI walking into the fattening pig slaughterhouse and asking, “Are my pigs enjoying their slop?”

Sora wasn’t supposed to allow people to make videos of people who weren’t directly logged in, but it was very easy to circumvent OpenAI’s controls. Yes, deepfakes of real people like civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and actor Robin Williams discovered, which led their daughters to go on Instagram and ask users to stop making videos of their dead father.

After making several videos of Sam Altman stealing Nvidia chips from Target, users switched gears. Instead, he deliberately created content using copyrighted characters, inviting legal trouble for his favorite character to take it seriously – we saw Mario smoking weed, Naruto ordering Krabby Patties, and Pikachu doing ASMR.

This did not go as planned. Instead of filing a lawsuit, Disney, a well-known litigation company, gave OpenAI a $1 billion in revenue and a licensing deal that would have allowed Sora to make movies featuring characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars.

It was seen as a pivotal moment for the AI ​​industry. But with Sora gone, so is the deal — though, at best, it seems no money changed hands before it fell apart. (Disney issued a polite statement on the matter on Tuesday, telling the Hollywood Reporter that “continue to engage with AI platforms” going forward.)

The original show around Sora was real. The app peaked in November with nearly 3,332,200 downloads on the iOS App Store and Google Play, according to mobile intelligence firm Appfigures. If the program had continued to grow, maybe OpenAI would have continued, but that’s not what happened. By February, it had declined to 1,128,700 downloads. This seems like a big number, until you remember that ChatGPT has it 900 million users every week.

Over its lifetime, Appfigures estimates that Sora generated approximately $2.1 million from in-app purchases, which allowed users to purchase more video cards. It’s hard to imagine that the computer demand for the Sora app made the company exist in the past. working at a lossbut the program may have had a greater responsibility to prevent it from failing as it grew.

When OpenAI launched the Sora program, I envisioned a world where we could have deep learning tools for each other. Even though I don’t make TikToks, I felt a responsibility send a PSA that this dangerous technology is coming fast. It reached over 300,000 views, which is not something that happens on my usually sleepless TikTok account, but the story caught people’s attention. I didn’t expect it to last only six months.

But just because Sora is gone doesn’t mean the threat has gone with them. The Sora 2 version is still available – it’s just kept behind the ChatGPT paywall. And OpenAI is not alone in making this technology available. It’s only a matter of time before the next AI video app hits the market, and we’re inundated with another tsunami of videos as Snow White storms the Capitol.