Sora was a text-to-video model and social media app developed by OpenAI. Using artificial intelligence, the model generated short video clips based on text prompts and could also extend existing short videos. In February 2024, OpenAI previewed examples of its output to the public, and the first generation of Sora was released publicly for ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Pro users in the United States and Canada in December 2024. A second generation, Sora 2, was released to select users in the US and Canada at the end of September 2025, integrating social media features. The app was shut down on April 26, 2026, and the application programming interface (API) was planned to be discontinued on September 24, 2026, marking the end of the Sora AI brand.
Sora was built on an adaptation of the technology behind DALL-E 3, using a diffusion transformer architecture. By default, the generator used copyrighted material in its videos unless copyright holders actively opted out. Videos contained a visible, moving digital watermark to prevent misuse, but a week after Sora 2's release, third-party programs became available that could remove the watermark.
Background
Before Sora, several other models capable of generating video from text had been created, including Meta's Make-A-Video, Runway's Gen-2, and Google Veo. OpenAI, the company behind Sora, had released DALL-E 3, the third of its DALL-E text-to-image models, in September 2023. These earlier developments laid the groundwork for the text-to-video generation that Sora would later popularize.
Initial Release
The team that developed Sora named it after the Japanese word for 'sky' to signify its "limitless creative potential." On February 15, 2024, OpenAI first previewed Sora by releasing multiple clips of high-definition videos it had created, including an SUV driving down a mountain road, an animation of a "short fluffy monster" next to a candle, two people walking through Tokyo in the snow, and fake historical footage of the California gold rush. OpenAI stated that it was able to generate videos as long as one minute. The company then shared a technical report highlighting the methods used to train the model. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also posted a series of tweets responding to Twitter users' prompts with Sora-generated videos.
As of December 9, 2024, OpenAI had gradually made Sora available to the public for ChatGPT Pro and ChatGPT Plus users in the U.S. and Canada. Prior to this, the company had provided limited access to a small "red team," including experts in misinformation and bias, to perform adversarial testing on the model. The company also shared Sora with a small group of creative professionals, including video makers and artists, to seek feedback on its usefulness in creative fields. In February 2025, OpenAI announced plans to integrate Sora into ChatGPT by letting users generate Sora videos from the chatbot.
Sora 2
Sora 2 was unveiled on September 30, 2025, with an iOS app at the same time, as well as an Android app two months later. All videos generated by the model featured a visible, moving watermark to prevent misuse of the tool. The previous version of Sora also added a safety watermark to allow viewers to distinguish between real and fictional content. On October 7, 404 Media reported that third-party programs that could remove the watermark from Sora 2 videos had become prevalent. Many outlets, such as Wired magazine, noted that the Sora 2 app was overtly similar to TikTok in style and features.
Discontinuation
On March 24, 2026, OpenAI announced on X that it was discontinuing Sora in both the mobile app and the API. The Sora app was shut down on April 26, 2026, while the API was planned to be shut down on September 24, 2026. OpenAI's partnership with Disney, which included a licensing agreement allowing Disney characters to be used within Sora, was also coming to an end. The decision prompted British technology news website The Register to label OpenAI a "product-killer," following in the footsteps of other technology companies such as Google, Amazon Web Services, Broadcom, Cloud Software Group, and Netscape.
OpenAI did not provide a specific reason for discontinuing Sora in its shutdown notice. Reports that emerged regarding this discontinuity linked the decision to computation shortages, cost pressures, and a broader shift toward core enterprise products. Following its public launch, Sora's worldwide users peaked at around a million before declining to fewer than 500,000, while the service cost an estimated $1 million per day to operate due to the computational demands of video generation.
Legal Regulation
In November 2024, an API key for Sora access was leaked by a group of testers on Hugging Face who posted a manifesto stating that they were protesting that Sora was used for "art washing." OpenAI revoked all access three hours after the leak was made public and stated that "hundreds of artists" have shaped the development and that "participation is voluntary."
At the time of its launch, Sora 2 allowed copyrighted content by default unless copyright holders contacted OpenAI to restrict the generation of their content on the platform. On October 3, 2025, OpenAI stated that a future update to Sora 2 would give copyright holders "more granular control" over the generation of copyrighted content, but the company did not state whether existing content would be removed. On October 6, the chairman of the MPA criticized OpenAI's approach to copyright with Sora 2.
On December 11, 2025, the Walt Disney Company announced that it would invest $1 billion in OpenAI, in a three-year licensing deal, to allow users on Disney+ to generate more than 200 of its copyrighted characters on Sora 2. These characters included those from Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel Studios, and Star Wars.
Capabilities and Limitations
The technology behind Sora was an adaptation of the technology behind DALL-E 3. According to OpenAI, Sora was a diffusion transformer, a denoising latent diffusion model with one transformer as its denoiser. A video was generated in latent space by denoising 3D "patches," then transformed to standard space by a video decompressor. Recaptioning was employed to augment training data by using a video-to-text model to create detailed captions for videos.
OpenAI trained the model using publicly available videos as well as copyrighted videos licensed for the purpose, but did not reveal the number or the exact source of the videos. Upon its release, OpenAI acknowledged some of Sora's shortcomings, including its limited capacity to simulate complex physics, to understand causality, and to differentiate left from right. OpenAI also stated that, in adherence to the company's existing safety practices, Sora would restrict text prompts for sexual, violent, hateful, or celebrity imagery, as well as content featuring existing intellectual property.
Sora researcher Tim Brooks stated that the model learned how to create 3D graphics from its dataset alone, while fellow Sora researcher Bill Peebles said that the model had a limited ability to simulate complex physics. These limitations were typical of early generative AI video models, which often struggled with temporal consistency and physical realism.
Impact and Legacy
Sora's release marked a significant milestone in generative AI, demonstrating the potential of deep learning models to generate coherent video content from text prompts. Its rapid adoption and subsequent discontinuation highlighted the challenges of scaling such computationally intensive models. The integration of social media features in Sora 2 reflected a broader trend of AI tools incorporating community and sharing capabilities, similar to platforms like TikTok.
The shutdown of Sora, along with its high operational costs and declining user numbers, raised questions about the sustainability of standalone AI video generation services. The decision also drew comparisons to other tech companies that have discontinued products, such as Google and Amazon Web Services. Despite its short lifespan, Sora influenced subsequent developments in text-to-video technology and contributed to ongoing debates about copyright, watermarking, and the ethical use of AI-generated content.