{"id":566804,"date":"2026-03-28T15:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T15:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/566804\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T15:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T15:26:09","slug":"why-openai-killed-sora-the-verge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/566804\/","title":{"rendered":"Why OpenAI killed Sora | The Verge"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday morning, everything was business as usual at OpenAI. By the end of the day, the company had announced<\/a> that it would scrap its video-generation app, Sora, and reverse plans for video generation inside ChatGPT; it would wind down<\/a> a $1 billion Disney deal; it would shuffle the role of a high-level executive; and it would raise an additional $10 billion from investors, adding up to more than $120 billion total for its latest funding round.<\/p>\n

OpenAI is now in a frenzy to turn a profit, or at least lose less money. Since its launch, Sora seems to have taken up a massive amount of compute without the financial return to justify it. Industry sources told The Verge that it\u2019s been lagging behind competing video-generation models. But despite its short life, it\u2019s leaving behind a legacy of eroded trust in judging what\u2019s real.<\/p>\n

As OpenAI faces questions from investors and hot competition from Anthropic and Google, executives seem to agree that a change in direction is warranted. \u201cWe cannot miss this moment because we are distracted by side quests,\u201d Fidji Simo, OpenAI\u2019s CEO of AGI deployment (after being moved from her role as CEO of applications), reportedly<\/a> told staff recently. \u201cWe really have to nail productivity in general and particularly productivity on the business front.\u201d That means backing off projects like Sora, as well as reportedly<\/a> deprioritizing the \u201cadult mode\u201d sexting capabilities it had been exploring for ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

Sora was already struggling to compete in the cutthroat AI video generation industry, according to Trevor Harries-Jones, board member at the Render Network Foundation, a nonprofit that allows creators to explore and compare AI-generated video on its platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state of innovation and the plethora of choice means there\u2019s just little to no moat and it\u2019s very simple to switch between,\u201d Harries-Jones told The Verge. \u201cIf your model is not the top at any one thing, it\u2019s very hard to get mass usership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harries-Jones said that he would guess OpenAI\u2019s decision is due to the \u201cstaggering\u201d rate of innovation in the video-generation part of the AI industry and steep competition from companies including Google and Kling.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, there wasn\u2019t anything that they were winning, in terms of one of the use cases,\u201d Harries-Jones said, so Sora didn\u2019t have an obvious edge. \u201cIt had fallen off from really a very strong start, to be eclipsed by some of the other competitive players in the space.\u201d He also said that the announcement of Sora and the marketing videos seemed \u201cgroundbreaking\u201d but that there was a \u201cgap\u201d between the buzzy demo videos and the actual launch. \u201cAs with all these, the devil is in the details on the cost, the timeframe that can be generated, and more,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sora\u2019s user struggles may be reflected in download numbers from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm. Seema Shah, the firm\u2019s VP of insights, told The Verge that Sora was \u201cone of the fastest-growing apps when it first launched\u201d but that it \u201creally dropped off\u201d after a couple of months, potentially due to competition from Google and other companies. Sora started off strong in October with about 4.8 million worldwide downloads and 6.1 million in November, followed by a sharp drop-off in December (3.2 million) and in the following months: 2.1 million in January, 1.4 million in February, and just 1.1 million month-to-date for March.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s most notable about it is dropping off while they\u2019re expanding into new markets \u2014 that should be driving growth,\u201d Shah said, adding, \u201cYou should\u2019ve seen an uptick in that. Even if nobody else in the US downloaded it again, there should be some growth, presumably.\u201d<\/p>\n

Video generation burned up a lot of expensive computational power at a time when OpenAI desperately needed it. In October at the company\u2019s annual DevDay event, OpenAI executives repeatedly expressed<\/a> the need to generate more revenue and concerns about how compute constraints could block OpenAI from scaling. \u201cObviously someday, we have to be very profitable,\u201d OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at the time, mentioning that the company was in a phase of \u201cinvesting aggressively.\u201d<\/p>\n

That same day, company president Greg Brockman told reporters, \u201cAsking, \u2018How much compute do you want?\u2019 is a little bit like asking, \u2018How much of the workforce do you want?\u2019 The answer is you can always get more out of more.\u201d OpenAI also teased ads within ChatGPT Pulse at the time, which famously turned into ads throughout ChatGPT last month.<\/p>\n

The revenue push is further frustrated with the loss of the Disney deal. Last year, the entertainment giant promised a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI with the option for Disney to buy additional equity, and it also stipulated that Disney become a \u201cmajor customer\u201d of OpenAI, using the company\u2019s products to build new products for Disney+ and the rest of the company, plus making ChatGPT available to employees. The deal also allowed Sora to feature AI-generated videos of hundreds of Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel characters, of which a selection would be available to stream on Disney+ itself. Then, reportedly<\/a> less than an hour after OpenAI and Disney were working together on a Sora-related project, Disney was blindsided by plans to discontinue the app.<\/p>\n

The rapid cancellation of the OpenAI-Disney partnership \u2014 just over three months into a three-year licensing agreement \u2014 seemed to cause the most public surprise. While some online chatter suggested it demonstrates a larger failure of AI in entertainment, Dave Davis, chief content officer at Protege, which licenses audio and visual content to AI companies for model training, said that it was clear that Disney is very much still open to licensing agreements with other companies working on video-generation AI. That could eventually mean partnering with companies like Google, Runway, Luma, Moonvalley, Kling, or Seedance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see a lot of momentum in licensing,\u201d Davis said, adding that for well-known companies like Disney, it\u2019s typically a strategic play to inspire fan interaction in new ways. \u201cThe Disney-OpenAI deal was one sign of that. I think it\u2019s great that in the exit announcement, Disney made it clear that they are wide open for business to continue character licensing with other parties.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sora shutdown news came one day after OpenAI published a blog post<\/a> about how to use Sora safely, saying the company was continuing to \u201cstrengthen Sora\u2019s guardrails\u201d and introduce stricter protections for videos featuring kids and teens. OpenAI had also reportedly<\/a> planned, earlier in the month, to integrate Sora\u2019s video-generation capabilities into ChatGPT itself, before scrapping that strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve decided to discontinue Sora in the consumer app and API,\u201d OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood told The Verge in a statement, pointing to an X post<\/a> promising more information on timelines for winding down the app and API soon. \u201cAs we focus and compute demand grows, the Sora research team continues to focus on world simulation research to advance robotics that will help people solve real-world, physical tasks.\u201d<\/p>\n

OpenAI also said that it needs to focus its existing compute on its AI agent goals, and that Sora was a step toward the goal of better world simulation research, particularly robotics. Fittingly, the original Sora wind-down announcement post was edited<\/a>, possibly to lay the groundwork for OpenAI\u2019s continued work on world simulation AI, which may very well use the AI model behind Sora to further its work.<\/p>\n

As OpenAI works to shift its focus from a flurry of moneymaking efforts \u2014 like forays into social media, new browsers, new subscription tiers, new advertising plans, and new government contracts \u2014 and expand its resource output into coding and enterprise tools, it\u2019ll be competing even more directly with Anthropic. Its rival has built up a reputation<\/a> for a clear enterprise focus and is leading the market, at least by many accounts, on coding tools.<\/p>\n

Sam Gregory, executive director at Witness, a nonprofit fighting against deceptive AI and deepfakes, says he\u2019s not sorry about the loss of a tool to generate \u201cAI slop.\u201d But he is incensed that \u201cin the absence of real money, real investment, real will,\u201d things only seem to change for business reasons, not real harm.<\/p>\n

\u201cSora launched with a splash in terms of this ability to create hyper-realistic content\u2026 what angers me actually is what they normalized in the period of six months, a set of things that I think have really long-lasting implications,\u201d Gregory said. \u201cThey normalized a world in which in multiple seconds people are really uncertain about what they are seeing in their timelines both when it matters and when it doesn\u2019t matter\u2026 whether it\u2019s casual comedy\u2026 or conflict footage from Iran.\u201d He added, \u201cThe consequences will reverberate even if the app is gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Altman\u2019s statement in October that the company was \u201cinvesting aggressively\u201d now seems to have turned into aggressively attempting to appease the company\u2019s own investors, especially as OpenAI reportedly plans to IPO as soon as this year. As billions of dollars continue to pour into the AI industry, investors are beginning to take a closer look<\/a> at whether they\u2019re getting a return and which parts of the industry may be a bubble.<\/p>\n

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