OpenAI pulls the plug on Sora, the viral AI video app that sparked deepfake concerns

The OpenAI logo is displayed on a cellphone with an image on a computer monitor generated by ChatGPT's Dall-E text-to-image model, Dec. 8, 2023, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI is shutting down its social media app Sora, which went viral last fall as a place to share short-form videos generated by artificial intelligence but also raised alarms in Hollywood and elsewhere.

OpenAI said in a brief social media message Tuesday that it was “saying goodbye to the Sora app” and that it would share more soon about how to preserve what users already created on the app.

“What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing,” it said.

The company behind ChatGPT released Sora in September as an attempt to capture the attention, and potentially advertising dollars, that follow short-form videos on TikTok, YouTube or Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook.

But a growing chorus of advocacy groups, academics and experts expressed concern about the dangers of letting people create AI videos on just about anything they can type into a prompt, leading to the proliferation of nonconsensual images and realistic deepfakes in a sea of less harmful “AI slop.”

OpenAI was forced to crack down on AI creations of public figures — among them, Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mister Rogers — doing outlandish things, but only after an outcry from family estates and an actors’ union.

Disney, which made a deal with OpenAI last year to bring its characters to Sora, said in a statement Tuesday that it respects “OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere.”

“We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators,” Disney’s statement said.

The Associated Press