OpenAI’s Slop Machine Sora is dead. We’re all better off without it

OpenAI said Tuesday it would do so Stop the previously viral AI video appSora, 176 days (or about 6 months) after it was first released. He bravely asked the question: Should we do it? truly Need this? For once, I arrived at the correct answer. No, no, we don’t do that.

This is the largest and most public project that OpenAI has killed. While it certainly shows a lack of trust in the generative media side of things, I don’t think it’s a sign of the collapse of the AI ​​industry. (Sorry if that’s what you were hoping for). The real story is a little deeper.

If OpenAI wanted to build the best AI video tool or invent a new kind of social media, it could have done it, and it would have done so. But Sora is an odd duck. The second-generation model is impressive, earning a spot in CNET’s ranking of AI video tools. But the social media app is weird. Half AI, half social media, it’s all fake.

Whatever Sora intended, he never lived up to the dream. But there’s still a lot to learn from Sora’s rapid rise and untimely death.

There’s always a small chance that OpenAI will change its mind — just take a look at the Meta, which He pulled the plug and sent Metaverse in two days. But I think the company — and all of us who have to live in this age of artificial intelligence — will be better off if it continues on this path. This is why.

Sora was never the end game for OpenAI

Here’s the dirty secret of generative media: it’s very expensive. It takes a lot of developer work to create a model that doesn’t produce embarrassingly bad results. So it is expensive even before it is released. Once this is done, it is much more computationally demanding to display complex videos and images than relatively simple text. Above all, it is controversial. You’ll likely be sued for copyright infringement at some point, but that’s nothing new. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of CNET, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

It’s not a game you want to be in unless you’re all in. OpenAI had two paths it could take with Sora: full social media or full video AI. He didn’t do that either. OpenAI has never been as interested in Sora as it is with ChatGPT.

The company never invested the resources it needed to transform its video model into a professional, cutting-edge tool. Sora 2 had great audio and visuals, yes. But you can’t edit your videos easily. Her storyboard tool never lived up to my expectations, and I’m not a professional. Meanwhile, Google has built professional editing software for its AI tools, called Flow, and Adobe has integrated its AI into existing industry-standard editing software. The Sora 2 model is great, but it was limited by where it was located within the app and website.

So, if Sora wasn’t a professional tool, at least not without a lot of work, its primary purpose was to create memes. It was strange that OpenAI was willingly entering the social media space. The newer AI video model certainly made sense. But managing a social media platform is a difficult task that comes with a lot of responsibilities, difficult choices, and ethical imperatives. Content moderation alone is a juggernaut that should have sunk Meta more than once. (And a jury in New Mexico Meta was slapped with $375 million in fines Because of its failure in moderation and safety less than an hour after the Sora news broke on Tuesday.) Sam Altman has never indicated that he is interested in becoming the AI ​​version of Mark Zuckerberg.

(Meta actually released an AI-powered video app shortly before OpenAI, called Vibes. You probably didn’t know this because no one cared.)

Sora has never developed a real persona on social media. There were no big cultural moments. It didn’t have TikTok dances or Instagram legacy, for example. There were no brands paying for ads or popular content creators attracting new users. OpenAI was probably losing a lot of money just to keep the app running. We can make memes without AI, and frankly, The last thing we need is more AI To scroll through.

It wasn’t until OpenAI closed a $1 billion deal with Disney that it looked like Sora might have received a lifeline. If OpenAI hadn’t shut down Sora, I’d bet Disney might have given Sora the boost he needed. The ability to legally create videos featuring recognizable characters would have attracted new users and reignited fan enthusiasm. But the world isn’t missing out without the possibility of more Spider-Man-themed adventures.

Instead, stopping Sora gives OpenAI the opportunity to pursue that most elusive goal for tech companies: actually useful AI.

So what is the endgame?

While the last half of 2025 was about AI-powered photo and video tools, 2026 is about AI doing things, especially in the workplace: agent AI, crypto proxies, claws, and bots.

Anthropic set off a race this year when its advanced tools Claude Code and Cowork proved that AI could be a serious tool in the workplace. OpenAI has released a Codex to compete, but Anthropic’s popularity and new user signups are on the rise. Fidji Simo, head of applications at OpenAI, reportedly told employees earlier this month that “side tasks” would be cut back to focus on more work tools. By comparison, AI videos certainly don’t seem like a top priority.

Realistically, these business-focused tools are more attractive to customers who might pay real money to OpenAI for their AI services. Whatever OpenAI’s real financial situation is, I imagine they want this business. It also proves that the company isn’t just the first to make generative AI mainstream. It can create value beyond that Information full of errors, Flattering pseudo-healers And the horror that is Romantic companions ai.

Everyone likes to talk about how the AI ​​industry is advancing rapidly, breaking things, asking for forgiveness later, etc. But if one of the things the AI ​​industry is killing is the useless stuff it created in previous years, I think we’d all be better off because of it.

I hope Sora’s death inspires us to have a serious conversation about who we are In reality We need our AI tools to do this. Because they are not AI memes. It’s not much else that AI companies want you to believe. The first step towards ridding ourselves of useless AI – in our lives Smartphones, A work of art and culture -We realize that we don’t need it.