On Monday evening, the Walt Disney and OpenAI teams were still working on a shared project related to Sora. Thirty minutes after the meeting ended, Disney colleagues learned that the app they were developing together would no longer exist.
On Tuesday, March 24, OpenAI announced the closure of Sorathe app for generating short videos using artificial intelligence, has been the absolute protagonist and conqueror of the social scene in recent months, at least before starting to be viewed with suspicion and raising strong concerns, both in Hollywood and in other environments. The announcement came with a post on Sora’s official X account where the company wrote:
We’re saying goodbye to Sora. 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. We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.
Let’s say goodbye to Sora. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and helped build the community around it: thank you. What you accomplished with Sora was important, and we know this news is disappointing. We’ll share more information soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on how to preserve your work.
Why OpenAI is closing Sora
The official reasons were not explained in detail, although the picture that emerges from the statements released to the media is quite clear. An OpenAI spokesperson explained that as computing demand grows, the Sora research team will focus on Real-world simulation to advance roboticsand the company added that it must make difficult choices on products with high computational costs.
The closure comes as OpenAI prepares to go public by the end of the year, and an app that eats up computing resources is the last burden a company needs when it wants to convince investors. From what emerges, Sora’s upkeep costs were too high compared to the yieldespecially when compared to other products.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the head of OpenAI applications, Fidji Simohad already communicated to employees this month that the company could not afford “distractions”, outlining a decisive orientation towards the capabilities of agentive AI — that is, those systems capable of working autonomously on computers to write software, analyze data and perform other tasks. Also according to the Wall Street Journal, the CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman would communicate the changes to staff on Tuesday, stating that the company would gradually discontinue products based on video models. In addition to the consumer app, OpenAI will also discontinue a developer version of Sora and will no longer support video functionality within ChatGPT.
A very short story, between records and controversies
OpenAI launched Sora in September 2025 to allow users to create and share AI-generated videos on social media-like platforms: software capable of producing cinema-quality videos from textual input. The launch was an instant success, and the app became the most downloaded app in the Photos & Videos category of the iOS App Store within a day of release.
The problems were not long in arriving and in a short time a growing number of associations, academics and experts began to express a certain concern, linked to the possible risks of this applicationwhich allows anyone to create AI videos about anything via a simple prompt, resulting in proliferation of non-consensual images and realistic deepfakes. OpenAI was forced to intervene on the reproductions of public figures – including Robbin Williams, Martin Luther King, Bryan Cranston, Michael Jackson and Mister Rogers – used in extravagant contexts and often considered out of place, but only after protests from the heirs and an actors’ union.
Disney’s billion that will never arrive
Sora’s closure brings with it another illustrious victim. Just three months ago Disney had signed a three-year agreement with OpenAISora could have generated videos featuring over 200 licensed characters across Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars, with Disney+ adding a curated selection of videos made with the app. A billion dollar investment, the transaction of which, however, had not yet been completed, and at this point never will be.
As reported in the post on
