OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is set to shut down its AI text-to-video generator, Sora.
The news comes despite OpenAI having a three-year licensing deal worth US$1billion (AU$1.4 billion) with Disney allowing the app to incorporate 20 Disney characters. The deal lasted three months. Payments had not yet been made.
In a statement posted on X, OpenAI said: “We’re saying goodbye to the Sora app. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built a community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing.”
The tech company has not elaborated on why it is shutting down or what a shutdown timeline will look like.
The app allows users to generate short, realistic videos from written prompts. By describing an action or scene, users can generate visuals that mimic real-world physics and camera movement. The tool had become useful to marketers, creatives and storytellers looking to prototype or produce video content.
On Monday evening, local time, Disney and OpenAI teams were working together on a project linked to Sora.
Just 30 minutes after that meeting, the Disney team was blindsided with word that Sora was being dropped altogether, a person familiar with the matter said.
“It was a big rug-pull,” according to the person, who requested anonymity.
Disney said it “respected” OpenAI’s decision to shift its focus elsewhere.
“We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, 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 statement said.
OpenAI is expected to focus its efforts into other areas including productivity tools and robotics in an effort to streamline its offerings.
The shutdown follows uncertainty for the AI giant as they reshuffle priorities to remain competitive against its main rivals Anthropic, Google and Meta.
Rival platforms like Google Veo also give users the ability to turn text prompts into video. This model type is rapidly improving control and quality, now offering features like editing tools as tech companies race to define the future of AI-generated video creation.
Sora was first previewed by OpenAI in 2024 and released to the app store in late September 2025. The app uses AI to generate life-like videos as prompted by users.
When released on the app store Sora was downloaded 1 million times in less than five days. The app struggled to maintain popularity and was never able to match the dominance OpenAI’s flagship product ChatGPT has garnered.
Sora has not addressed what will happen to existing users and content/projects generated on the app.
