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Without warning, OpenAI pulled the plug on its Sora AI short video generation app.
By Matt Jancer | Reviewed by Ysolt Usigan
Not even AI could’ve generated such a shocking headline as to wake up and read that OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, was putting its wildly popular Sora AI video generation on life support. It’s not just the iOS and Android apps getting the boot. It’s the browser version, as well. All of Sora is living on borrowed time.
There was a hell of an appetite for Sora’s smartphone apps when they debuted in late 2025. It raced to the top of the download charts for Android in November 2025 even faster than it had for iOS a month earlier. But the app gained a troubled reputation almost immediately after it launched for iOS on September 30, 2025.
From the use of copyrighted material that angered Hollywood to the outright fake news generated through the app, it wasn’t long until angry folks bombed the rating of the iOS Sora app to a dismal 2.8 stars.
The Wall Street Journal broke the news on March 24, 2026, citing tumbling popularity as one of the factors behind OpenAI’s decision. Yanking support from Sora also means that OpenAI can redirect some of those freed-up resources to more promising pursuits.
“As we focus and compute demand grows, the Sora research team continues to focus on world simulation research to advance robotics that will help people solve real-world, physical tasks,” as passed along in a statement by an OpenAI spokesperson to CBS News later that day.
“We’re saying goodbye to Sora,” OpenAI announced on X.com on March 24, 2026. “To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing.”
The post alludes to sharing details on how users can export the videos they generated in Sora so that they survive the app’s retirement, as well as a timeline for when OpenAI will take Sora offline. Until this undefined time, you’ll still be able to use Sora and generated videos.
The same afternoon, OpenAI also took to Instagram to elaborate. Kind of a strange move. I’m used to (although not thrilled) about companies eschewing press releases and blog posts to announce major news and posting on X.com instead. Instagram is an odd move. But then the entire saga of Sora has been equally odd.
OpenAI’s Instagram post reads, “An important update about Sora: Today, after careful internal discussion about our broader research priorities, we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue Sora. We know many of you invested significant time and energy into Sora – building not just gens, but also audiences and real communities. The creativity that emerged exceeded what we could have expected…”
The Instagram post’s comments section was a mix of shock, fawning declarations of love for Sora, mockery, and schadenfreude, from “No, please! Reconsider this choice. Sora really helped me in expressing my creativity. It was the best app in this niche,” to “Thank god lmfao. This shit is cancer.” Come to think of it, OpenAI’s post is kind of like a microcosm of the entire discussion around AI.
MORE: The AI Tools Worth Paying For (Because Free Is Trash)
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