OpenAI Just Killed Sora and Disney Found Out 30 Minutes After a Meeting About It

Here is something that sounds like it belongs in a movie: Disney and OpenAI teams were in a meeting together on Monday evening, working on a joint project using Sora, OpenAI's AI video generation tool. Thirty minutes after that meeting ended, Disney got word that OpenAI was killing Sora entirely.

Just like that. No warning, no heads up, no "hey, about that thing we were just working on together..."

For those unfamiliar, Sora was OpenAI's tool that could generate videos from text descriptions. You type "a golden retriever skateboarding through Tokyo" and it would create a realistic-looking video of exactly that. It was one of the most hyped AI products of the past two years.

So why kill it? Reports suggest the tool was hemorrhaging money. AI video generation requires enormous computing power, and every video a user created was costing OpenAI significantly more than what they were charging. The math simply did not work out.

The real story here is not just the shutdown. It is that OpenAI was actively collaborating with one of the biggest entertainment companies on the planet, and pulled the rug out from under them with essentially zero notice. That is not how partnerships usually work.

This raises bigger questions about building your business on top of AI tools that could vanish overnight. If Disney can get blindsided, what chance does a small creator have?

As reported by Reuters.

Source: Reuters