OpenAI announced on Tuesday that it’s shutting down Sora, the AI video app it released in 2024 and which itself released a tidal wave of hate content, porn, deepfakes, and, on the plus side, Sam Altman mockery. Please join me for a rousing round of: lol, get fucked.
“We’re saying goodbye to Sora,” OpenAI wrote on Twitter. “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. We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.”
The Wall Street Journal notes that OpenAI is also “discontinuing a version of Sora for developers and won’t support video functionality inside ChatGPT, either.” This comes as the company consolidates other of its products and basically tries to figure out what it is and why people would pay money for it.
This sudden-feeling shutdown is also happening just three months after OpenAI and Disney signed a three-year licensing agreement for OpenAI to bring Disney characters to Sora, which Variety writes is “the first instance of Disney licensing its intellectual property to an AI platform.” The deal also included a plan for Disney to gain a $1 billion stake in OpenAI. What’s happening with that? Disney told Variety:
As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere. We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators.
Not much help there! (Update, 3/24/26, 6:15pm: The Hollywood Reporter cites a source who says Disney will exit the deal.)
Sora was always a terrible idea, especially in the era of the second Trump administration: an on-demand misinformation machine, set loose onto the internet as more people than ever are getting their news from social media, and as short-form video–the primary kind of video AI can make, given the cost and its own fuckups over time–takes over apps and news. From cute animal videos to White House memes to protest violence to other cute animal videos, Sora and other AI-generated video products have sowed hate, lies, or just inconsequential bullshit that have made the internet a worse place to be. In their race to make out with the biggest bag before the bubble bursts, AI companies have been unconcerned with the effect their products have on regular people, whether that’s misleading them when it matters or just being obnoxious as fuck.
The only unfortunate part of Sora’s shutdown is that it isn’t the only AI video app out there; there are still plenty more to spew their shit. But one less source of misinformation and planet-boiling garbage is still something to celebrate. Here’s hoping more follow.
