Pour one out for Sora, the groundbreaking — but quickly overtaken — video generation app from OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT.
Born Dec. 2024, and baptized by a billion-dollar Disney deal a year later, Sora was axed by OpenAI on Tuesday — and the Disney deal was trashed alongside it.
“We’re saying goodbye to the Sora app,” the Sora team announced Tuesday via the OpenAI X feed. “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.”
OpenAI did not confirm reports that Sora would soon be available within ChatGPT itself, but did promise to “share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.”
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Sora launched to great fanfare. Some of us even wondered if the launch could herald a new cinematic medium. But it was soon eclipsed by other more fully-featured AI video generation apps such as Google’s Veo and Luma Ray.
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In Dec. 2025, the cinematic might of Disney was added to the Sora app via a $1 billion deal — one that would allow users to create videos with some of Disney’s vast roster of copyrighted characters. Though as we also noted at the time, the deal was a much better one for Disney than for OpenAI, which continues to burn through cash at the rate of roughly $1 billion a month.
Everything is fine: Disney CEO Bob Iger says OpenAI deal isn’t a threat to creatives.
Still, Disney CEO Bob Iger was touting the OpenAI deal, which was to last for three years, as recently as Feb. 2026. But a month is a long time in AI world.
“As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere,” a Disney spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter, confirming multiple Hollywood insider reports that the deal was DOA.
“We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it,” the Disney spokesperson continued, “and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators.”
The sudden and confused nature of the announcement — which irked many Sora creators on social media — suggests all is not well behind the scenes at Sam Altman’s company. OpenAI has also been scrambling recently to introduce new mental health safeguards for teen users in the wake of multiple wrongful death lawsuits. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
