OpenAI is planning to enter the social media space with the launch of the Sora app.
The app, which is currently only available in the US and Canada and by invite only, allows users to upload video generations of themselves into Sora-generated scenes and share short-form videos with friends.
The Sora app appears to be similar to TikTok, Instagram Reels and other short-form video feeds, and follows Meta’s announcement that it has added a video feed called ‘Vibes’ to its Meta AI app.
OpenAI has trialled the app internally and is now inviting external users to give it a go.
“We first started playing with this ‘upload yourself’ feature several months ago on the Sora team, and we all had a blast with it. It kind of felt like a natural evolution of communication—from text messages to emojis to voice notes to this,” the company announced on its website.
The tech company said that inside the app, users can “create, remix each other’s generations, discover new videos in a customisable Sora feed, and bring yourself or your friends in via cameos”.
“With cameos, you can drop yourself straight into any Sora scene with remarkable fidelity after a short one-time video-and-audio recording in the app to verify your identity and capture your likeness.”
OpenAI will consider a user’s Sora activity, their location, past post engagement and ChatGPT conversation history—which can be turned off—to curate algorithmic recommendations on users’ feeds.
It launches with parental controls via ChatGP that allows tech savvy parents to override infinite scroll limits, turn off algorithmic personalisation and control who can directly message children.
The launch of the Sora app comes with user safety challenges. AI-generated videos that replicate a human identity can be easily abused by bad actors.
OpenAI said that users have full control over their AI-generated ‘likeness’ and who has access to it. Users can also remove any videos that use their ‘likeness’.
At creation, guardrails seek to block unsafe content before it’s made—including sexual material, terrorist propaganda, and self-harm promotion—by checking both prompts and outputs across multiple video frames and audio transcripts.
Sora 2 will initially be available for free, with generous limits to start so people can freely explore its capabilities, and the Sora app will be rolled out by invite only.
