Opinion
Disney and OpenAI open Pandora's box of AI
by Luca Fontana
Sora facing the end: OpenAI surprisingly pulls the plug on its video AI
25.3.2026
Translation: machine translated
OpenAI's video AI app Sora hit like a bomb and secured the company a billion-euro investment from Disney. The service was discontinued just a few months later.
That's it for the AI video app Sora. About X, the service, which like ChatGPT is part of OpenAI, surprisingly announced that the app and the developer API will soon no longer be available. Details will follow later.
This raises questions. It was only in December that the Disney Group invested one billion US dollars in Sora and signed a three-year contract to release 200 licensed Disney characters for use in Sora's AI videos. This deal now no longer seems to be materialising.
Why is Sora being cancelled?
OpenAI has not yet commented on the reasons. Despite the enormous success of ChatGPT, the company is struggling with financial problems. At the beginning of December, CEO Sam Altman had already asked his employees to improve the core product ChatGPT because competition from Google and Anthropic was gaining ground. In February 2026, the announcement that ChatGPT would will display adverts - a measure that CEO Sam Altman had previously always rejected as a last resort for funding.
A few days ago, it was announced that OpenAI was working on a strategic reorganisation. The company wants to focus more on its core competences ChatGPT and enterprise solutions. The board of directors is therefore discussing which other areas can be deprioritised.
Now it seems to have hit Sora. A cost-benefit analysis may also have contributed to this: Sora is expensive to run, as creating videos requires enormous computing power. However, the Sora team is to remain in place and focus on «simulating the real world in order to advance robotics that are intended to support people in concrete, physical tasks», as a spokesperson says.
Header image: OpenAI/Sora
Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.
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