OpenAI announced this week that it is shutting down its Sora program and related video models just six months after launching the app.
In a recent episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I debated what the decision means for OpenAI and the industry more broadly. To some extent, the move seems to be in line with what we’ve been hearing about OpenAI as it focuses on business and productivity tools ahead of a possible IPO.
In fact, Kirsten suggested that OpenAI’s decision to shut down Sora was “a sign of maturity that was nice to see in the AI lab.”
But the closing of Sora – and ByteDance’s reported delay in launching its Seedance 2.0 video model around the world – may also be a time to test what’s really going on for AI video tool makers, and for preachers who say these tools will replace Hollywood anytime soon.
Read a preview of our interview, edited for length and clarity, below.
Anthony: I think it’s worth highlighting that it’s not just an app. I mean, the app wasn’t very interesting to me, at least, and I think to some people, because it was this idea of a social network without people, where it’s nothing but slop.
But beyond the app, it seems that OpenAI is essentially covering everything it does with video. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke some of these stories, it is about this idea that Open AI – before it goes public – is really trying to focus on business products, business products, programming products. [So] this consumer community app, [and] wide video, not important right now.
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Sean: Yeah, I’ve never really used it [the app]. Your mind turned me off for many different reasons. And you know, it was a good reminder that Open AI – and I don’t mean this to knock them down in any way – but I think this was a reminder, maybe, for them internally, of the luck factor. […] that’s how ChatGPT became successful.
Obviously, there’s something important there for people, I don’t want to take away from that, because you don’t get to the usage numbers that we’ve heard reported to them unless there’s something that works well—and even more so that it’s been maintained over the years and developed into something that always makes sense to people.
But there was a Sora aspect, where we came out, like, “We’ve built a very successful consumer product, and now we’re doing it again. And we’re going to bring Disney and all these things.” I think this is a very harsh reminder that it’s not always going to be a perfect shortcut to the pinnacle of the greatest consumer products of all time and that there really has to be something that people feel they find some meaning in in order for it to exist.
Kirsten: Yes, I actually want to give OpenAI props for this decision, because sometimes we make fun of the whole idea of ”go fast and break things,” but I think it has some merit. [to] companies that can’t iterate too fast and kill products that don’t work and feel a sense of failure behind them. I mean there was real money lost. If you were to look at the deal with Disney, that was billions of dollars, but if you look – and we have no insight into this because we don’t see their balance sheets – but what were they spending on this and what was the long-term value of the company?
And I think that while, sure, it was interesting to see what they could create, their decision to shut it down, to me, showed a sign of maturity that was nice to see in an AI lab.
Anthony: As for what it means for OpenAI, it seems pretty consistent with everything we’ve been hearing about their strategy going forward. It doesn’t seem like a big deal or anything like that in terms of how we think about the future of productive AI.
Especially in the video, it is interesting because it also comes at this time that it has been reported about Seedance, which is the model of ByteDance that produces AI. [for video]. There are reports that [Seedance 2.0 has] it is delayed because there are engineering and legal questions and basically [figuring out]”Can we build IP protection around this?” Obviously, they never took it seriously.
So, it’s time for a reality check. There were these really hyperbolic statements, including from people in Hollywood [were] like, “We’re done, this is the future, just typing information and making feature films.” And it turns out that for all kinds of technical and legal reasons, it’s not that simple and we’re very far from what’s happening.
Sean: And the last thing I think we should say about this, is that this is one of the many decisions that seem to have happened after the entry of Fiji Simo. [and began] kind of carrying out daily activities. That’s the biggest dynamic that’s changed within OpenAI. And I think that if we continue to move away from that moment of his castration to run the show, and especially these consumer products and determine its fate, it will be easy to look back at this time and think how big a time it was for this company.
