The ChatGPT creator and Walt Disney Co. are also ending their collaboration related to Sora, OpenAI announced on Tuesday. Disney had entered a deal to license famous characters like Mickey Mouse and Cinderella for use on Sora, alongside a $1 billion investment in the startup, as reported by Bloomberg, which was structured entirely in stock warrants instead of cash licensing fees.
The Sora app was introduced by the ChatGPT developer in late September, boasting features that enabled users to easily create and share realistic AI videos in a quasi-social network. The free app initially soared to the top of Apple’s App Store but has since dropped in the rankings.
The decision to close Sora aligns with OpenAI’s initiative to simplify its product offerings. The company is also working on a desktop application that integrates its ChatGPT chatbot, coding tool, and web browser, according to Bloomberg News. Like other AI video generation tools, Sora required substantial computational resources to operate.
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In a memo to staff regarding the changes, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mentioned that the company is concentrating on AI agents and a new artificial intelligence model named Spud, which he anticipates will be ready in the upcoming weeks.
OpenAI did not provide a comment concerning Altman’s memo. In a statement about Sora’s changes, an OpenAI spokesperson noted: “As we focus and compute demand increases, the Sora research team continues to prioritize world simulation research to enhance robotics aimed at assisting people in solving real-world tasks.”
The Sora app utilized a version of OpenAI’s video creation software of the same name, enabling users to produce short clips in response to text prompts, view videos made by others, and remix existing clips. Concerns have been raised about the potential for the product to generate videos of real individuals and possibly disseminate misinformation.
Alongside the discontinuation of the standalone app, OpenAI will also shut down the application programming interface utilized by developers for Sora.
“We’re bidding farewell to Sora,” OpenAI’s Sora account shared on social media Tuesday. “To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built a community around it: thank you. What you created with Sora was significant, and we understand this news may be disappointing.”
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the discontinuation of Sora.
In the staff memo, Altman also indicated that OpenAI will reorganize some of its security and safety teams for better integration into the development process, allowing the CEO more time to focus on capital raising and infrastructure projects.
