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It didn’t take long for OpenAI’s text-to-video AI app, Sora, to melt down into outrageous drama. Almost immediately after the company rolled out the flashy smartphone app in early October, it became ground zero for photorealistic videos of people shoplifting, flagrantly copyright-infringing footage of SpongeBob SquarePants cooking up meth, and mocking clips of deceased celebrities.
Less than five months on, OpenAI is looking to rid itself of the “unholy abomination” of Sora, a mind-numbing TikTok-like experience that few users stuck around to actually use regularly. (After initially topping App Store charts, downloads plummeted.)
As the Wall Street Journal reports, OpenAI is now looking to discontinue the app entirely, once again highlighting how its jittery executives are looking to refocus the company’s efforts on potential money makers, including enterprise and coding, ahead of its rumored IPO.
CEO Sam Altman told staff in an announcement today that the company is winding down any products related to its video AI models. Even a developer-facing version of Sora will be nixed, per the WSJ.
Perhaps most strikingly, a previously rumored integration inside the company’s ChatGPT chatbot is also on the chopping block, indicating OpenAI has given up on the idea in its entirety.
The dramatic U-turn leaves plenty of glaring questions unanswered. For one, we don’t know what will come from a multi-billion-dollar deal OpenAI struck with Disney in December, a mere three months ago. The three-year deal was meant to include more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar characters, allowing users to generate videos of them inside Sora and ChatGPT.
We also don’t know OpenAI’s exact reasoning behind the move. Could it be related to the widespread copyright infringement allegations its Sora app sparked last year? Or other abhorrent content?
A more likely explanation, perhaps: the app is incredibly expensive for OpenAI to run, and it’s not generating any revenue.
“We cannot miss this moment because we are distracted by side quests,” OpenAI’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, told employees in a memo, as quoted by the WSJ last week. “We really have to nail productivity in general and particularly productivity on the business front.”
Considering Sora has absolutely nothing to do with productivity in any meaningful way — it’s arguably the very antithesis — it’s no wonder OpenAI is looking to call it.
More on Sora: People Are Already Creating Ghoulishly Horrifying Sora Disney Videos
