OpenAI has announced it is shutting down Sora, a TikTok-style social application that launched six months ago, without providing a reason for the decision or a timeline for when the app will officially be discontinued.
Sora was designed to function as an AI-first short video platform, replicating the vertical video feed interface familiar from TikTok. Its flagship feature allowed users to scan their faces and generate realistic AI-produced videos of themselves, which could be made public for others to use. The feature, originally called “cameos,” was renamed “characters” after a legal challenge from the company Cameo, which prevailed in court.
The app peaked in November with approximately 3.3 million downloads across the iOS App Store and Google Play, according to mobile intelligence firm Appfigures, before declining to roughly 1.1 million downloads by February. Over its lifetime, the app generated an estimated $2.1 million from in-app purchases, which allowed users to buy additional video generation credits.
Despite the initial excitement around the platform, Sora struggled with moderation problems from the outset. The app was not supposed to allow users to generate videos of public figures who had not explicitly opted in, but those guardrails proved easy to evade. Deepfakes of figures including civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and actor Robin Williams emerged on the platform, prompting their daughters to publicly ask users to stop creating videos of their deceased fathers. Users also generated videos featuring copyrighted characters including Mario, Naruto and Pikachu.
The moderation challenges complicated what had appeared to be a landmark moment for the AI industry. Disney, rather than pursuing litigation, had offered OpenAI a $1 billion investment and a licensing deal that would have allowed Sora to generate videos featuring characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars. With the app’s closure, that deal has also collapsed, though no money appears to have changed hands. Disney said Tuesday it would “continue to engage with AI platforms” going forward.
The underlying Sora 2 video and audio generation model remains available through the ChatGPT paywall. Analysts note that while the social app is gone, the broader technology it showcased continues to advance, with other companies developing similar AI video generation tools.
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