OpenAI has abruptly shut down its AI video-generation service Sora.

All plans were scrapped, including the Sora app and API, a plan to integrate it with ChatGPT, and a $1 billion partnership it had been pursuing with Disney.

The Disney deal was reportedly at the level of a verbal understanding, not a formal contract. The Sora team will shift its direction toward world simulation for long-term robotics research.

The halt of Sora was an unexpected announcement.

According to Alex Heath (알렉스 히스), who publishes the newsletter Sources and co-hosts the Vox Media Access podcast, the mood was different even 7 weeks ago. At the time, OpenAI head of services Fidji Simo (피지 시모), who appeared on Access, mentioned a plan to integrate ChatGPT and Sora. While acknowledging that the initial buzz had cooled somewhat, he voiced expectations, saying Sora was "delivering real results in content creation."

OpenAI posted a blog entry updating Sora's content policy even the day before announcing the shutdown of Sora.

Alex Heath viewed GPU resource allocation as a key factor behind OpenAI's decision. He said, "Video generation is a task that consumes an enormous amount of GPUs. The judgment is that OpenAI will redirect chips that were going into Sora to Codex and enterprise products that it is focusing on." He added, "Anthropic made coding features into a product that ordinary users, not just developers, can use. Claude Cowork is a representative example. OpenAI is under strong pressure that it has to catch up."

In broad terms, OpenAI is now fleshing out a super-app strategy. The plan is to integrate ChatGPT, Codex and the Atlas browser into a single desktop app to scale up its agents. He said, "It was unclear where Sora fits into this strategy, and it had been running into a wall in negotiations for content supply deals, so a decision to pull out was made."

Sam Altman (샘 알트먼), OpenAI's CEO, also announced an organisational overhaul on the day he disclosed the closure of Sora. Under the changes, the safety division will be moved under the research organisation led by Mark Chen, and the security division will be moved under the scaling organisation led by Greg Brockman. Altman himself will focus more on fundraising and building data centres. Fidji Simo will serve as CEO of the AGI Deployment unit and oversee the rest of the core business overall.

Altman said OpenAI has also completed pre-training of its next-generation model, codenamed Spud. He said, "A very powerful model will come out within a few weeks, and the whole team believes this model can meaningfully accelerate the overall economy."