Why did OpenAI kill Sora? Edge

On Tuesday morning, everything was business as usual at OpenAI. By the end of the day, The company had announced It will eliminate the Sora video generation application, and reverse video creation plans within ChatGPT; He will calm down $1 billion Disney deal; It would confuse the role of a high-level executive; It will raise an additional $10 billion from investors, adding up to more than $120 billion in total in the latest funding round.

OpenAI is now in a frenzy to make a profit, or at least lose less money. Since its release, Sora appears to have used a massive amount of computing without getting the financial return to justify it. Industry sources said Edge It was lagging behind competing video generation models. But despite its short life, it leaves behind a legacy of corroded confidence in the judgment of what is true.

While OpenAI faces questions from investors and heated competition from Anthropic and Google, executives seem to agree that a change in direction is warranted. “We can’t miss this moment because we’re distracted by side quests,” said Viji Simo, CEO of AGI Deployment at OpenAI (after moving from her position as CEO of Applications). It is said Recently told employees. “We have to really boost productivity overall, especially productivity on the business front.” This means backing away from projects like Sora as well It is said Deprioritizing the “adult mode” sexting capabilities she was exploring for ChatGPT.

Sora was already struggling to compete in the AI ​​video creation industry, according to Trevor Harris-Jones, a board member of the Render Network Foundation, a nonprofit that allows creators to explore and compare AI-generated videos on its platform.

“The state of innovation and abundance of choice means there are few moats, and it is very easy to switch between them,” Harris-Jones said. Edge. “If your model is not the best at anything, it is very difficult to get a large number of users.”

Harris-Jones said he believes OpenAI’s decision is due to the “incredible” rate of innovation in the video generation part of the AI ​​industry and intense competition from companies including Google and Kling.

“For us, there wasn’t anything they were winning, in terms of one of the use cases,” Harris-Jones said, so Sora didn’t have a clear advantage. “It has come back from a very strong start, only to be overtaken by some other competitive players in the space.” He also said that the Sora announcement and marketing videos looked “groundbreaking” but that there was a “gap” between the teaser demo videos and the actual launch. “As with all of these matters, the devil is in the details regarding cost, time frame in which it can be achieved, and more,” he said.

The user pain Sora faces may be reflected in download numbers from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence company. Seema Shah, Vice President of Insights at the company, said: Edge that Sora was “one of the fastest growing apps when it first launched” but “actually declined” after a couple of months, possibly due to competition from Google and other companies. Sora started off strong in October with around 4.8 million downloads worldwide and 6.1 million in November, followed by a sharp decline 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 year-to-date in March.

“What’s most notable about this is the decline as they expand into new markets — that should drive growth,” Shah said, adding: “You should have seen an uptick in that. Even if no one else in the US downloads it again, there should be some growth.”

Video generation consumed a lot of expensive computational power at a time when OpenAI needed it most. In October at the company’s annual DevDay event, OpenAI executives spoke Expressed repeatedly The need to generate more revenue and concerns about how computing limitations will prevent OpenAI from scaling. “It’s clear that one day, we should be profitable,” Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said at the time, noting that the company was in a phase of “investing aggressively.”

On the same day, company president Greg Brockman told reporters: “He asked me: How much computing do you want?” It’s a bit like asking the question: “How big do you want your workforce?” The answer is that you can always get more from more. OpenAI also teased ads within ChatGPT Pulse at the time, which switched to ads via ChatGPT last month.

The revenue increase was further dampened by the loss of the Disney deal. Last year, the entertainment giant promised to invest $1 billion in OpenAI stock with an option for Disney to purchase additional shares, and also stipulated that Disney would become a “major customer” of OpenAI, using the company’s products to build new products for Disney+ and the rest of the company, as well as making ChatGPT available to employees. The deal also allows Sora to showcase AI-generated videos of hundreds of Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel characters, a selection of which will be available to stream on Disney+ itself. then, It is said Less than an hour after OpenAI and Disney worked together on a Sora-related project, Disney was surprised by plans to shut down the app.

The quick cancellation of the partnership between OpenAI and Disney — just over three months into the three-year licensing agreement — appears to have caused the biggest public surprise. While some online chatter suggested this was indicative of a larger failure of AI in entertainment, Dave Davis, chief content officer at Protege, which licenses audio and video content to AI companies for model training, said it was clear that Disney was still largely open to licensing agreements with other companies working in the field of video-generating AI. This could eventually mean partnering with companies like Google, Runway, Luma, Moonvalley, Kling, or Seedance.

“We’re seeing a lot of momentum in licensing,” Davis said, adding that for established companies like Disney, it’s usually a strategic play to inspire fan engagement in new ways. “The Disney-OpenAI deal was one sign of that. I think it’s great that Disney made clear in their exit announcement that they are wide open for companies to continue licensing characters with other parties.”

News of Sora’s closure came a day after OpenAI’s announcement Blog post On how to use Sora safely, saying the company is continuing to “strengthen Sora’s guardrails” and offer stricter protections for videos featuring children and teens. OpenAI was too It is said Earlier this month, the company planned to integrate Sora’s video generation capabilities into ChatGPT itself, before scrapping that strategy.

“We have decided to discontinue Sora in the consumer application and API,” said Kayla Wood, OpenAI spokeswoman. Edge In a statement, pointing out Share X Promising more information on app and API finalization timelines soon. “As we focus and account for growing demand, the Sora research team continues to focus on global simulation research to develop robots that will help people solve real-world physical tasks.”

OpenAI also said it needed to focus its current computing on AI agent goals, and that Sora was a step toward the goal of improving global simulation research, especially robotics. It’s fitting that the original post announcing Sora’s termination was just that It has been editedperhaps to lay the foundation for OpenAI’s ongoing work on AI world simulation, which may use the AI ​​model behind Sora to advance its work.

As OpenAI shifts its focus from the wave of money-making efforts — such as social media forays, new browsers, new subscription tiers, new advertising plans, and new government contracts — and expands its resource output into programming and enterprise tools, it will compete more directly with Anthropic. Her competition has Built a reputation For a clear enterprise focus, it also leads the market, at least by many accounts, in the area of ​​programming tools.

Sam Gregory, executive director at Witness, a nonprofit that fights against deceptive AI and deepfakes, says he’s not sorry about losing a tool to generate “dirty AI.” But he is angry that “in the absence of real money, real investment, and real will,” things seem to change only for business reasons, not for real harm.

“Sora launched with a surprise in terms of this ability to create very realistic content… What actually pisses me off is what they’ve normalized in a six-month period, which is a bunch of things that I think have really long-term effects,” Gregory said. “They’ve normalized a world where for several seconds people are really unsure about what they’re seeing on their timelines whether it matters or when it doesn’t matter… whether it’s casual comedy… or conflict footage from Iran.” He added: “The consequences will resonate even if the application disappears.”

Altman’s statement in October that the company was “investing aggressively” now appears to have turned into a serious attempt to appease the company’s investors, especially since OpenAI plans to go public as soon as this year. As billions of dollars continue to flow into the AI ​​industry, so do investors Start taking a closer look About whether they are getting a return, and which parts of the industry may be a bubble.