OpenAI is shutting down Sora, the video-generation technology the company unveiled in 2024, shocking entertainment executives with its ability to use artificial intelligence to quickly produce short videos that looked as if a Hollywood studio had made them.
Just three months ago, OpenAI and Disney signed a three-year licensing deal allowing Sora users to generate videos with Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and Yoda. The agreement was considered a watershed for the tech industry and Hollywood, and some worried it was the first big step toward replacing the entertainment industry’s actors and creators with A.I.
OpenAI is shutting down both its Sora consumer app and the internet service that moviemakers and other professionals used to generate images for movies, television and other media, the company said.
In a statement to The New York Times, OpenAI said it would continue to use video-generation technologies behind the scenes as a way of teaching skills to robots. Because videos provide a reasonable simulation of the physical world, they are often used to train robots for specific tasks.
“We’re saying goodbye to Sora,” OpenAI said in a social media post. “To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing.”
OpenAI did not give a reason for shutting down Sora. But the decision appears to be part of the company’s efforts to focus and streamline its operations as it prepares for an initial public offering as early as this year.
Last year, OpenAI pulled in about $13 billion in revenue, but it expects to spend about $100 billion more over the next four years, in part for a major expansion of data centers.
Running a video-generation service — particularly a consumer app with no source of revenue — is an enormous expense. A.I technologies like Sora require far more computing power and electricity than traditional internet services.
Disney said it would continue to explore partnerships with A.I. companies willing to license its intellectual property.
“As the nascent A.I. field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video-generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere,” the company said in a statement. “We will continue to engage with A.I. platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect I.P. and the rights of creators.”
In Hollywood, many actors, animators and writers are worried that A.I. could replace their jobs. That hasn’t happened yet, in part because the major studios have been slow to adopt these technologies.
Disney and Universal are suing a start-up, Midjourney, for allowing people to use its A.I. image generator to create images that “blatantly incorporate and copy” characters owned by the companies. Midjourney has rejected the claim, saying its actions are “fair use” under copyright law.
When OpenAI released its Sora consumer app last year, people immediately created videos with copyrighted material from across pop culture. Copyright holders like Disney could opt out of the platform.
Though Sora videos spread rapidly on social media in the weeks after its release and Sora rose to the top of the Apple App Store, it never matched the popularity of OpenAI’s breakout product, ChatGPT.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)
Cade Metz is a Times reporter who writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology.
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