We have some breaking news that OpenAI is going to discontinue their video service Sora, their video model. There was a post from the official Sora account that said we're saying goodbye to the Sora app. Today on the podcast, we'll be breaking down everything happening with the discontinuation of this, why this had so many people shocked, and where we can expect AI and VO to go forward in the future, and maybe what some of the early warning signs were for this to begin with. I'm sure some people are celebrating, some people have other mixed opinions.
We'll be breaking down everything that's been said on X about this as well. So let's get into it. But I want to say before we do, as you probably know, I recently added video to my own platform, AIbox.ai for video generation, and we actually have the Sora model on there. So before it is deleted, before the API is gone forever, if you want to try out the Sora AI video model, this may be your last chance.
You can go for $8.99 a month. You can go check out AIbox.ai, get access to Sora, and over 70 different AI models, including everything from Brock to Gemini to ChatGPT to all of the top AI image, audio, video models, and it's $8.99 a month. So there's a link in the description to AIbox.ai. If you want to go try it out, I'll leave it linked down there.
All right, let's talk about what's happening with Sora. So the official Sora account, which is Sora official app over on X, tweeted out a couple hours ago and said, we're saying goodbye to the Sora app, 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.
We'll share more soon, including timelines for the app and the API and details on preserving your work, the Sora team. Which is, what's interesting there is, I mean, it basically spelled out, you know, saying as far as like timelines, it's not like what the future holds for the app or the API. It's like the timeline, aka they're going to kill the Sora app. They're going to kill the API as well, which I mean, personally, it's kind of annoying since I just recently got the API linked in with my own startup, but we'll just have to make some plans for killing that out.
The top comment on this comes from Kirianio, who says, this is insane. Do you all know what you're throwing away here? Are we going to open source it? Or at least, I think, honestly, that would be an amazing future for this product.
You know, OpenAI probably could do some, you know, they could make a lot of developers happy if they open source it, but I highly doubt they will, because I'm sure part of their reason here is they're like, oh, look, people are making an AI swap. I also think that that's probably like the excuse that they'll use, even though there's like a hundred other AI models, but the real reason why they're getting rid of it, I think, is probably a little bit more interesting. But before we get into that, I wanted to read a little excerpt from the Wall Street Journal that was just reporting on what Sam Altman said. So this was a quote from the Wall Street Journal that said, CEO Sam Altman announced changes to staff on Tuesday, rating that the company would wind down products that use its video models.
In addition to the consumer app, OpenAI will also discontinue a version of Sora for developers and won't support video functionality inside ChatGPT either. OpenAI is in the middle of a strategy shift to redirect the company's computing resources and top talents towards so-called productivity tools that can be used by both enterprises and individual users. Last week, OpenAI announced it was combining its ChatGPT desktop app, coding tool codecs, and browser into one super app. The company expects the consolidated product to align its employees around a single vision.
Now, Consolidated personally actually has both the codecs and I also have their Atlas app, and, you know, ChatGPT has a desktop app, so, you know, kind of combining all those does make a lot of sense to me. I'm not sure why you need multiple. I also have the Claude app, which has basically all of those features in one place as well. So I think as far as consolidating the app, that makes a lot of sense.
Now, Kaling off one of their, you know, major AI models, which, to be fair, had a lot of use. I still remember when this thing came out back in October, Sora hit a million downloads faster than ChatGPT did, and of course, that's kind of probably riding on the back of a lot of these viral clips that people are making and kind of a lot of the viral campaigns that they had built around this. So I think, I think Sora had about 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days compared to ChatGPT, which had like 606,000 in its first week. So obviously, like, this was a very popular app, but it seemed to be something that was popular for a second, right?
Maybe you got like 10 invite codes you could share. Anyways, it was, you know, it was kind of a headache to get access to this, but once you did, personally, I made like a handful of videos, it was kind of funny, kind of a novelty, and I moved on because, I mean, basically the place that they made this the most accessible was, they did, I believe, have Sora.com, or they do, but the app was kind of the main place, and to be honest, I don't think a lot of people had a lot of interest in just using an app that was exclusively AI generated. I mean, really just like AI slop. There was a post that someone recently shared of the App Store downloads for Sora in the United States.
Actually, I think it was Canada, Japan, and the United States. Total downloads was about 4.58 million. Average monthly downloads is about 1.5 million. Somewhere around 100,000 a day, dropping off significantly to under 25,000 a day as of January, so I don't think, I don't think it's, you know, something that's, it basically had a major drop off in popularity, and I think basically people just tried it, they used it, and, you know, it's kind of a fun little novelty, but beyond that, it wasn't super, super exciting.
Now, one thing that someone posted, Trunest on X, they said, is this not extremely pointless? Someone will replace Sora, and it'll be 10 times more AI slop. When they say someone will replace Sora, I think a lot of people kind of have this, are kind of coming from this line of reasoning, like, oh, open eyes, trying to do, like, I don't know, like a noble thing, get rid of AI, so we don't have AI slop videos. At the end of the world, or at the end of the day, like, Google has VO3, which is a really powerful video model, and to be honest, I've used it for a bunch of different projects where it's been pretty useful.
Even when you look at companies like Adobe, they have video models embedded into Adobe, and I've used those as well. You know, I recently, a few months ago, I filmed a music video, and for my wife, she's a Christian musician, and the first few frames of the video, I realized they were, like, pointing at something that I needed to cut out, and so, anyways, it was kind of a hassle, but I basically was able to use their video expand tool to add a few extra seconds to the beginning of the clip, which made my whole thing work better. Anyways, I feel like there's just a lot of these, like, really useful, you know, just kind of expanding videos, or zooming in, zooming out, adding, like, little effects, even if you want it to be, like, you know, super authentic and raw footage, sometimes those things make a huge difference. So, beyond just AI slot, these AI video models are super useful for a lot of different things, and so, anyways, I don't think it's, you know, that's the reason why it's going away.
I think here there's a couple different reasons why open-air is killing it. Number one, I think compute, they're really trying to not get bottlenecked on compute. I think there's a lot of shortages on, you know, memory and a lot of other different hardware for some of these AI models coming up, and I think video is something that's super, super intensive. Now, it's just super cool, and it's kind of fun, and I think it puts you on the cutting edge, and a lot of people like it when you're working on it, like, video stuff, but I think it is quite a big struggle, and so if they were really to scale, I think, without a model, then I think that would be a struggle for them.
Now, I think the real reason is probably just because they're trying to consolidate their focus. I think that Anthropics Claude is kind of catching OpenAI by surprise. It's having a huge run-up right now. It's honestly just the best text model out there.
It's really good at reasoning. It's really good at coding. I think a lot of business professionals are kind of starting to use it. I think OpenAI is realizing that the highest paying tier of, you know, the highest paying user is kind of moving towards something like Claude, where it's really focused on a lot of reasoning and productivity tools.
Every time Claude comes out with a new feature, you know, it tanks the stock of half a dozen companies that are kind of in that area when they come out with, like, healthcare or finance or just a lot of these different features. And even recently, Claude just came out with their Claude computer use, which is an incredible tool. They can take over your computer, and I've been using that all day long, testing that out. And so I think OpenAI realizes that if they're not really kind of consolidating and focusing on their core product, they will get beat by Claude, and so I think that's where they're really trying to put a lot of their focus, even if it means killing off such a massive tool like Sora, which is pretty crazy to think because, you know, like, Anthropic, they only really have text that they're really strong at, and code is kind of a part of that, and that reasoning is kind of a part of that.
But Claude doesn't even do image generation. They don't do video generation. They don't do audio generation. Like, they're literally just code and reasoning, and they're just getting such a huge part of the market.
I think a lot of people are using that, and OpenAI is concerned. So it's interesting to see OpenAI roll back from successful popular products to focus on that core where they think there's a lot of, basically, threat, where they're being kind of threatened by an AI that is able to reason really well. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens here, especially considering the fact that there's also a lot of other video models out there. We have Sea Dance from China, which just kind of put on pause a lot of their releases because people could create copyrighted content.
Now, one other thing that was interesting with this whole story is that OpenAI was actually in the process of signing a, I think, like $200 million deal with Disney. They were working out the details where they were going to have Disney characters and kind of content embedded into the store model, and with this all being shut down, it seems like that deal is probably going to be off the table. So there's just a lot of moving parts that are happening here, and a lot of consolidations happening in OpenAI. I'll keep you guys up to date on everything happening with Sora and all this, but again, if you want to try Sora for the last time before it is deleted and gone forever, go check out AIbox.ai.
You can use Sora and all the other video models, tons of other models. There's over 70 on there, and I would love to see what you guys make. All right, have a fantastic rest of your day, and I'll catch you in the next episode.