OpenAI announces the end of the Sora app — deepfake concerns and worsening economics behind the decision
On March 25, 2026, OpenAI announced it would shut down its video generation social app “Sora.” While stating “what people made with Sora mattered. We know this news is disappointing,” it said a specific shutdown schedule would be “shared soon,” with details to be announced at a later date.
Details
- Announcement content: OpenAI said it was “saying goodbye” to the Sora app, and that it would soon provide details on how users could preserve the content they had created so far
- Underlying concerns: Reports indicate that advocacy groups, researchers, and experts had been raising growing concern over “the danger of anyone being able to freely generate AI videos”
- Celebrity deepfake issues: Inappropriate generated content depicting public figures such as Michael Jackson and Martin Luther King Jr. had become a problem, forcing OpenAI to tighten enforcement against this kind of content
- Financial challenges: Video generation carries enormous computing costs, and later reporting revealed that operating costs reached about $1 million a day while total revenue remained around $2.1 million, pointing to serious profitability problems
- Impact on the Disney partnership: The partnership with Disney, announced with great fanfare the previous December, was later reported to have fallen apart, seen as one factor contributing to the shutdown
What happened next
About a month after this announcement, on April 26, 2026, Sora’s web and app offerings actually ceased, with a period for exporting user data before everything was completely deleted. The API was slated to be discontinued on September 24 of that year.