When what seems to be a groundbreaking partnership implodes just three months after its announcement, it’s only natural for the parties involved to get all the attention. And when the companies in question happen to bring the baggage that is their own endless supply of palace intrigue, as OpenAI and Disney do, losing sight of what really matters is all the more understandable.
But push past OpenAI founder Sam Altman’s headlong pursuit of an IPO or new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad first week on the job, and there are larger questions to be addressed about the market implications of the Sora app’s early retirement that really deserve the focus.
Some may have jumped to a contrary conclusion for a simple reason: Data clearly indicates a steady decline in consumer interest in Sora after its debut atop the App Store last October. It’s evidence enough that there just wasn’t a sustainable audience interested in conjuring 10-15 seconds of video with simple text prompts.
But it’s worth wondering whether even if Sora growth exploded that would have dissuaded OpenAI from pulling its plug. Shuttering the app and jettisoning the $1 billion Disney deal are sensible choices for a company feeling pressure to eliminate distractions that weren’t core to its business and rein in the costs attendant to the enormous processing power fueling the app.
Sensor Tower noted 5 million monthly active users as of March, a base big enough to build on with a little more patience than OpenAI ended up demonstrating. Thus, it’s entirely plausible that Altman is walking away from something that could’ve been a viable venture — and has ramifications far beyond OpenAI.
Perhaps the AI giant has left the door open for another company capable of supporting an app in the vein of Sora to swoop in and try to pick up where OpenAI is leaving off, not unlike the way Meta launched Threads once Twitter started to crumble after Elon Musk’s takeover. There are more than a few AI video models poised to step into the vacuum created by OpenAI’s retreat, including ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0, Google’s Veo 3.2 and Meta’s Vibes.
But if there really is a market here, there are some key questions they would need to answer to validate the opportunity OpenAI is content to leave others to explore.
First is whether the core video-creation functionality Sora boasted was best presented to consumers as the heart of a new social media platform. When it was first introduced to the marketplace in 2024, it was simply a ChatGPT plug-in. It’s entirely possible OpenAI’s audacious bid to recontextualize Sora as a social-centric app was an overreach.
Then there’s the Disney factor. In the wake of its split with OpenAI, in a statement the company has signaled its intent to “continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans.”
That leaves the tantalizing possibility that Disney could strike a licensing deal with a different AI player to allow its intellectual property to be manipulated by consumers in videos of their own creation.
Even at this early stage, consumers are showing some interest in this kind of activity. Nearly half of total respondents to an FTI Consulting survey last May suggested they were either likely or very likely to sample a gen AI content platform, about equal to the share who were either neutral or negative in that regard.
Maybe the biggest mystery lingering over the Sora closure is what if any vehicle will emerge in its wake to test whether AI video technology represents an important new business media companies must take risks to unlock. Just because OpenAI doesn’t yet have the will to do it doesn’t mean no one else does.
