OpenAI Just Suddenly Shut Down Sora And Disney Isn’t Happy

Sayonara, Sora!

In a massive pivot that might be a bellwether for the AI industry, OpenAI is officially shutting down their flagship video-generating app ‘Sora’, reportedly blindsiding partners like Disney.

Since its launch in 2024, Sora has made headlines with its hyper-realistic AI videos, but clearly OpenAI have failed to find a profitable use case for the tech.

fruit love island sora — Fuck. How am I going to watch ‘AI Fruit Love Island’, now??? Oh, that’s not Sora, Ok, never mind, carry on.

Whilst AI videos now seem to dominate internet content, few of them actually use Sora. OpenAI have one eye on their competitor, Anthropic’s Claude, who don’t provide video generation and have become the industry standard for professional AI.

In many ways, Sora has served its purpose of showcasing OpenAI’s tech visually to the general public and now it’s not making any money it can be quietly retired.

Disney Is FURIOUS (but in a polite, corporate way)

Just maybe not too quietly because, according to Reuters, Disney didn’t even know Sora was getting shut down until it was announced. And that’s mega awkward because Disney inked a massive one billion dollar investment in OpenAI’s video technology, hoping to license their own characters to AI users.

In response to the news, a Disney spokesperson tactfully said, “We respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere.”

This doesn’t mean Disney is out of the AI video game altogether though and will likely find another partner to help achieve their twelve-fingered-princess dreams.

It’s unclear however whether this is the end of Disney’s OpenAI alliance all together or if Disney’s internal ‘DisneyGPT’ will continue to be used. Let’s assume yeah, though.

So will we see other companies pivot away from AI video generation? Probably not, but it is a massive shunning of the technology, which might have reached a peak in terms of its use.