OpenAI Just Killed Sora.
An era (albeit a short one) is ending: OpenAI is reportedly shutting down Sora, the company’s once-viral AI video generation app. The Wall Street Journal was first to report the news, claiming the app’s closure is part of a larger plan to streamline OpenAI ahead of a potential IPO (initial public offering) later this year.
According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman first discussed the news with company employees on Tuesday. This move appears to go beyond simply shutting down the Sora app itself: in addition to canceling the developer version of Sora, Altman reportedly told employees that OpenAI will not use its video AI models in other company products going forward, including ChatGPT.
Sora’s official X-Men account confirmed the news :
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A Brief History of Sora
OpenAI launched Sora just last October , and in that short time, the app has helped spread AI-generated content across social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Sora is far from the only tool people are using to create AI-powered video content, but it offered a simple solution for generating hyper-realistic short videos. If you’ve encountered AI-generated versions of the videos you typically scroll through on social media, chances are they were created thanks to Sora.
Sora also allowed for the creation of ” cameos ,” videos featuring real people. The company insisted its privacy and security policies were strict enough to ensure the service wouldn’t be used maliciously, but the potential for deepfakes was so great that it seemed like a Pandora’s box waiting to be opened. However, Sora gained some legitimacy in the eyes of mainstream media: in a surprising move , Disney partnered with OpenAI to allow users to create videos featuring over 200 Disney characters. One might assume OpenAI paid for this integration, but, conversely, Disney invested $1 billion in the company. (That’s not a typo.) But with the end of Sora, Disney officially pulled out of the deal on Tuesday.
Does this mean OpenAI will stop producing AI videos?
This announcement has implications beyond Sora. If OpenAI abandons AI video generation altogether, it will be out of intense competition with companies like Google (Veo) and ByteDance (Seedance). Sora uses OpenAI’s Sora video model, which the company announced two years ago . OpenAI’s concept video scared the crap out of me back then; the AI video market has only grown since then. While Sora may have been the primary tool for creating short, pointless videos, the internet is full of other nonsense created with other tools—some of which is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from reality.
It appears OpenAI will shift its focus in the future. The company previously announced a new ” super app ” that combines its web browser ( Atlas ), ChatGPT, and the programming app Codex into a single program. Apparently, Sora didn’t fit into this scheme.
( Note: Lifehacker’s parent company, Ziff Davis, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging that the company infringed Ziff Davis’s copyright in the training and operation of its AI systems.)