OpenAI surprisingly announced the discontinuation of its Sora video generation service, just six months after its launch in September 2025, in a move that signals a redirection of its resources toward developing more advanced models.
The Sora team confirmed in an official statement that the platform will stop soon, with promises to share additional details about the dates of the complete shutdown and methods for saving user-generated content.
Upon its launch, Sora achieved widespread and rapid growth, attracting the attention of content creators and reaching one million downloads in record time, thanks to its ability to create high-quality videos and include users within them. However, its popularity later declined due to controversy over the use of celebrities’ faces without permission.
These criticisms prompted the company to impose strict restrictions requiring prior approval to use people’s photos, which reduced the platform’s attractiveness and affected users’ activity.
This decision represents the first major closure of a service from OpenAI, reflecting the challenges that even the largest AI companies face in balancing innovation and regulatory controls.
In contrast, users are expected to turn to other alternatives such as Google Veo, Runway, and Kling AI, which confirms that the race to develop artificial intelligence video technologies is still continuing.
