With OpenAI’s Sora gone, who will take up the AI video mantle?

March 27, 2026 — 5:00am

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OpenAI’s unexpected decision to shut down its Sora app, which allowed users to generate video clips by describing them, may open the door for other companies to make it big in AI video. But it also highlights the many ways in which the technology may simply be more trouble than it’s worth.

The AI giant and ChatGPT creator closed Sora this week as part of a widespread effort to cut costs, ahead of a rumoured public offering. In the six months it was available, the app created almost as many headaches for OpenAI as it did copyright-infringing SpongeBob clips for its dedicated audience.

Sora was originally revealed in early 2024, and made available to paying OpenAI customers later that year. But it didn’t hit the mainstream until it was released as an app in October 2025, hitting a million downloads in a matter of days. Structured like TikTok but with AI content generated by other users, the app encouraged people to make models of their own faces that others could use. It was immediately filled with violent, racist content, sexualised deepfakes of real people, and famous copyrighted cartoon characters in compromising situations.

In a blog post at the time, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said he was “hearing from a lot of rights holders who are very excited for this new kind of interactive fan fiction, and think this new kind of engagement will accrue a lot of value to them,........

© The Age