OpenAI Is Pulling the Plug on Sora

OpenAI's splashy AI video experiment is heading for the cutting-room floor—and it's taking a big Disney deal with it. The company says it is shutting down Sora, the standalone video-generation app it rolled out just months ago. CEO Sam Altman told staff Tuesday that video models are being wound down across the company, including a version of Sora for developers and video functionality inside Chat GPT, the Wall Street Journal reports.

• "We're saying goodbye to Sora. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you," OpenAI said in a statement. "What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing. We'll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work."

OpenAI first unveiled Sora in early 2024 and made it available to the public later that year, but it didn't gain widespread attention until Sora 2 and the standalone app were rolled out in September, the Guardian reports. It was a huge hit but was also criticized over racist and violent content, as well as deepfakes and the use of copyrighted characters. OpenAI brought in guardrails days after the launch. In December, Disney announced a deal to allow its characters in user-generated Sora videos. Disney is now backing out of the roughly $1 billion investment and licensing agreement, per the Hollywood Reporter.

"As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere," a Disney spokesperson said, adding that it will keep looking for ways to use AI that respect intellectual property and creators' rights. The shutdown of Sora leaves Google as the only major player with large-scale AI video tech, though Google faces its own legal challenges and hasn't secured big content-licensing deals.

The shutdown comes as OpenAI seeks to shift resources to "so-called productivity tools that can be used by both enterprises and individual users," the Journal reports. Earlier this month, Fidji Simo, the company's applications chief, told employees in an all-hands meeting that they couldn't afford to be distracted by "side quests." Altman told employees Tuesday that the Sora team would be shifted to projects including robotics.