OpenAI: Ending its AI video feature

OpenAI abruptly shut down its AI video generator this week only six months after its launch sent Hollywood scrambling, said Rachel Metz in Bloomberg. Sora, which could produce “realistic-looking AI videos” from
a text prompt, was packaged in a TikTok-style consumer app that let users share and comment on posts.

The ChatGPT maker and Disney “are also winding down their partnership, which had centered on Sora,” Metz said. Disney previously agreed to take a $1 billion stake in the startup and license 200 iconic characters to Sora in what some entertainment executives considered a watershed deal. In a note to staff, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said the company “is focusing its efforts on AI agents and a new artificial intelligence model.” The move coincides with “a push by OpenAI” to cut down expenses as it prepares to go public.

“OpenAI retrenching to focus on things like its core product and AI robotics makes sense,” said Robin Wigglesworth in the Financial Times. AI video generation “gobbles up a vast amount of computing power”—by some estimates, a 10-second Sora video was 2,000 times more costly than an AI text output. That’s “a problem until all of OpenAI’s massive data centers are actually completed.” But after all the hype that came along with Sora when it launched in September, its fast implosion “could prove to be a moment” that suggests the AI bubble is beginning to deflate.