OpenAI will soon be shutting down its Sora AI video generating service, the company said in a surprising announcement Tuesday.
“We’re saying goodbye to Sora,” the company wrote in a post on X. “We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.”
The closure of the resource-intensive AI service comes ahead of an expected initial public stock offering from OpenAI in the coming months.
The unveiling of Sora in 2024 rattled many in the entertainment industry, who quickly expressed concerns over the model’s ability to easily and quickly generate relatively high-quality video from text.
In October, the Sora 2 app surged to be the most popular app in the iOS App Store’s Photo and Video category within a day of its release, with many users creating lifelike videos of popular characters such as Lara Croft, Mario and Pikachu. Many of the videos raised alarm bells from copyright and deepfake experts.
In December, the Walt Disney Co. announced that it had reached a three-year deal with OpenAI to bring many of its popular characters to Sora’s artificial intelligence video generator. Disney also said it planned to make a $1 billion investment in OpenAI as part of the agreement.
Disney pledged to become a “major customer” of OpenAI, using its services to develop new products and experiences, including for its Disney+ streaming service.
NBC News has reached out to Disney for comment.
In recent weeks, top OpenAI executives have said that they are sharpening the company’s focus, recognizing that it cannot do “everything at once,” according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.
Just weeks ago, OpenAI announced that it had raised $110 billion in fresh funding, vaulting the company’s total value to about $730 billion.