OpenAI he says it killed Sora.
We say goodbye to Sora. To everyone who co-creates, shares, and builds a community around Sora: thank you. What you did with Sora was important and we know this news is disappointing.
We’ll be sharing more soon, including timelines and details for the app and API…
— Sora (@soraofficialapp) March 24, 2026
I wrote a week ago Sora was probably on the chopping block among OpenAIs focus on business and productivity tools. Looks like they were serious. It will be gone soon. Despite Sora’s ability to generate headlines (On first viewing, we at Gizmodo described it as “Breathtaking, Yet Terrifying”), the company pulls the plug on this compute-buzzing AI video experience.
By me on that first Sora day February 2024I was driving on Interstate 10 in the Mojave Desert when I first saw it Tweets by Sam Altman About OpenAI’s unreleased video model. The technology he demonstrated felt like such a huge and sudden leap in ability that I had to step aside and look at my phone.
That was my peak moment AI vertigo. I’ve never felt such a strong gut reaction to an AI technology, and I doubt I ever will again. Partly because something in my brain adjusted and deflection detection became a new survival skill. It didn’t hurt that some of the first releases published by OpenAI were weird, dismal failures.
Altman said the model was originally called Sora, but then OpenAI let the brand hibernate for months and months. Other AI video generators have been completely released to the publicand OpenAI in September of last year, quite confusingly Sora released 2. But it also branded OpenAI’s new TikTok-like video-sharing app Sora, a consumer-watched entry point for OpenAI’s once eye-catching video model. The killer feature in the Sora app was essentially deepfaking yourself and allowing others to deepfake you.
The results were so horrible I couldn’t bear to watch.
Against our better judgment, many influential commentators – and also truly yours– They entered Soramania for a short time. Allowing the model to fit your image was a bit like letting the kids sugar-coat you with markers and glitter, removing any sense of human connection and at a much more serious reputational risk.
But the excitement died down and the social aspects of the app never became a daily habit for the first wave of users. OpenAI was rumored to be going away for a while Fold Sora into ChatGPTbut that never happened. Now Sora is on death row, waiting for him to fade away.
At press time, it was still possible to view and create videos with the Sora app. The official Sora X account says that OpenAI will “share more soon, including timelines for the application and API, and details about protecting your work.” Disney already has Opted out of content sharing agreement with OpenAI.
Gizmodo reached out to OpenAI to clarify what this means for the continued existence of the model itself. While it’s simple to stop a video sharing app, it’s less clear whether the underlying model will be folded into another model, preserved in another way, or wiped off the face of the Earth. We’ll update if OpenAI gets back to us.
