OpenAI is shuttering Sora, its stand-alone AI video generation app and social network, and the availability for developers to access the Sora 2 video model family through its application programming interface (API) to rely on it for their own products or video generation pipelines.The announcement came abruptly this afternoon with OpenAI posting a message on X and not giving an exact shutdown date for the services, instead promising “timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.”Sora wowed the world with its highly realistic scene-crafting when it was first previewed by OpenAI in February 2024, more than two years ago now, only to be released to mixed reception as an updated Sora Turbo model 10 months later, at which point, many other competing video AI model providers such as Runway, Luma, and Chinese AI companies Kling and Minimax had already shipped impressive rivals.But OpenAI seemed intent on continuing to build out the video model and enabling creators until just now, releasing a Sora 2 model over API and apps for iOS, then Android in the latter half of 2025 — and the iOS app briefly hit number one in downloads on the Apple App Store. The application itself was designed to be a social network where users could insert AI generated lifelike versions of themselves and their friends into videos. The company released updates to Sora on a regular cadence all the way through this week, making the news of the shutdown even more abrupt.And Sora was even so enticing for a while that entertainment giant Disney signed a $1 billion equity investment deal with OpenAI announced in December 2025, just four months ago, to bring popular Disney characters to Sora, allowing users to generate new videos with them that Disney planned to share through Disney+, its streaming TV service. As that announcement read:”Under the license, fans will be a …
