Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company‘s Plugged In. Before we get underway, a little self-promotion: Apple’s 50th anniversary is on April 1. As the big day approached, I realized that many people present at the company’s creation were still very much with us. So I interviewed 23 of them for an oral history, “How Apple Became Apple: The Definitive Oral History of its Earliest Years.” It’s chock-full of great tales as told by everyone from cofounder Steve Wozniak to Liza Loop, the first Apple user. Hearing these pioneers reminisce, I felt like I had been there, too—and so will you, I think. Here’s the article.
When OpenAI launched its Sora app last September, the video-centric social network arrived on a tide of buzzy goodwill. Its feed of 10-second video clips had a TikTok-esque vibe—except that it was filled with AI-generated stuff instead of anything remotely real. In less than a minute, Sora users could create digital doppelgängers of themselves that were eerily convincing for use in their own clips and, optionally, those created by others. The result was playful, goofy fun, and far more intriguing than Meta’s theoretically similar but painfully bland Vibes.
But if Sora ends up being remembered for anything, it won’t be for existing. Instead, it will have made its mark by going away.
On March 25, OpenAI announced that it was killing the app, along with the Sora API that let developers generate their own videos using the company’s technology. It issued a statement: ”We’ve decided to discontinue Sora in the consumer app and API. 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.” The company also emphasized that still-image generation AI, such as that available in ChatGPT, remains a priority.
The decision appeared hasty: OpenAI still hasn’t shared details on when, exactly, Sora will cease to exist, or how users can download their videos for preservation.
Most of the insta-reaction I’ve seen to Sora’s demise amounts to grave tap-dancing of one sort or another. People are helpfully explaining that the app was a stupid idea from the start, or assailing it as a slop machine that deserved its fate. But I’m not ashamed to admit that I will miss it. For reasons I wrote about shortly after its debut, escaping to Sora’s weird little world always brightened my day.
For one thing, I found the app to be a genuine canvas for creativity, albeit in brief, inherently inconsequential bursts. My feed was full of fake commercials, fabricated vintage news clips, and other snippets of fantasy content that were like glimpses of bizarre alternate realities. An oddball crew of deceased celebrities—Larry King, Richard Nixon, Queen Elizabeth II—often starred in them, sometimes in uncannily convincing form and sometimes as vague approximations. On an internet that can feel unrelentingly grim, Sora’s essential absurdity made me laugh.
