All posts tagged: Sora

Beatbot Sora 30 Review: Midrange Price, High-End Results

Beatbot Sora 30 Review: Midrange Price, High-End Results

Published by skeptic

Charging is done via the same type of power adapter that the Sora 70 uses: a proprietary, blocklike connector that slides into a hatch on the rear of the device. A hinged port cover opens automatically when you slide the adapter into it and snaps shut when it’s removed. It’s not as convenient as a plugless charging dock, but it’s close, obviating the need for screw-on port covers or other waterproofing systems that have to be manually manipulated. ScreenshotBeatbot app via Chris Null In the water, the unit offers a scant three operational modes—floor mode, standard mode (which handles floor, wall, and waterline), and eco mode (which runs a floor-only cleaning for 45 minutes every 48 hours). Both floor and standard mode offer three running-time options: two hours, three hours, or max (i.e., run until the battery’s almost dead). These can all be selected through the Beatbot app, which is available via Bluetooth or either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz Wi-Fi. You’ll also need to set up Wi-Fi for firmware updates. A Capable Cleaner I …

Kevin Weil and Bill Peebles exit OpenAI as company continues to shed ‘side quests’

Kevin Weil and Bill Peebles exit OpenAI as company continues to shed ‘side quests’

Published by skeptic

OpenAI is losing two of the architects of its most ambitious moonshots. Kevin Weil, who led the company’s science research initiative, and Bill Peebles, the researcher behind AI video tool Sora, both announced their departures on Friday. The exits come as OpenAI consolidates around enterprise AI and its forthcoming “superapp.” The departures follow OpenAI’s decision to cut back on “side quests,” including customer-facing bets like Sora and OpenAI for Science. Sora, which was losing an estimated $1 million per day in compute costs, was shut down last month. OpenAI for Science was the internal research group behind Prism, an AI-powered platform that promised to accelerate scientific discovery. It’s being absorbed into “other research teams,” according to Weil’s social media post announcing the news. “It’s been a mind-expanding two years, from Chief Product Officer to joining the research team and starting OpenAI for Science,” Weil wrote. “Accelerating science will be one of the most stunningly positive outcomes of our push to AGI.” The team had a short and bumpy road after its formal announcement in October …

The Real Reason OpenAI Shut Sora Down Is a Warning to Every AI Startup

The Real Reason OpenAI Shut Sora Down Is a Warning to Every AI Startup

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech OpenAI unceremoniously killed off its text-to-video AI app Sora last month, bringing an abrupt end to months of brain-melting AI slop. Even what was supposed to be a groundbreaking $1 billion deal with Disney was caught in the crossfire. And as the Wall Street Journal reports, it wasn’t the massive bills or the legal liabilities arising from rampant copyright infringement that inspired it to kill the app. Instead, the company was desperately looking to free up computing resources to power its coding and enterprise products based on its upcoming AI model, code-named Spud. To executives’ frustration, compute remains a finite resource and infamously hard to come by, despite the industry pouring billions of dollars worth of borrowed cash into buildouts of enormous data centers. That should serve as a warning to every startup in the space, large or small: not attracting users is a problem, but if they show up in droves, it’s going to be a bottleneck and potential …

With Sam Altman’s OpenAI Closing Sora, Will AI Still Change Hollywood?

With Sam Altman’s OpenAI Closing Sora, Will AI Still Change Hollywood?

Published by Daniella Wilson

[Some spoilers follow for the current seasons of The Comeback and Paradise] The new season of The Comeback, in addition to heralding the return of one of the great annoying-watchable characters in premium cable television, also introduces an element we’ve yet to see dramatized in comedies: AI as plot device. Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish returns after many years away to find that television, or at least a certain kind of commoditized fast-streaming television, can now be written largely by machine. The show’s cringe-comedy dystopia dances on satire’s edge; are we to laugh at the replacement of human slop or fear what else could be taken over? Either way, Kudrow and her fellow executive producer Michael Patrick King leave one truth unchallenged: computers can already do plenty of creative jobs. As the season progresses this sends human writers into a tailspin (“I am just trying to get me and my kids out of this town before it explodes,” Abbi Jacobson’s showrunner character says in an epic rant) and a whole industry into a precarious state. Of course whether said industry actually faces …

Why OpenAI really shut down Sora

Why OpenAI really shut down Sora

Published by skeptic

OpenAI’s decision last week to shut down Sora, its AI video-generation tool, just six months after releasing it to the public raised immediate suspicions. The app had invited users to upload their own faces — so was this some kind of elaborate data grab? According to a new WSJ investigation, the real explanation is considerably more boring: Sora was a money pit that nobody was using, and keeping it alive was costing OpenAI the AI race. So what happened? After a splashy launch, Sora’s worldwide user count peaked at around a million and then collapsed to fewer than 500,000. Meanwhile, the app was burning through roughly $1 million every day — not because people loved it but because video generation is so costly to run. Every user who dropped themselves into a fantastical scene was drawing down a finite supply of AI chips. While a whole team inside OpenAI was focused on making Sora work, Anthropic was quietly winning over the software engineers and enterprises that drive revenue. Claude Code, in particular, was eating OpenAI’s …

OpenAI’s Sora is dead, but ByteDance has already filled the void

OpenAI’s Sora is dead, but ByteDance has already filled the void

Published by skeptic

On Tuesday, OpenAI rug-pulled its AI video creation tool, Sora — but it didn’t feel like a loss. If anything, it felt like a small win for AI-free creativity. However, that didn’t last long, with TikTok owner ByteDance announcing the global rollout of its Seedance 2.0 video creation tool, making its CapCut AI video generation app the first platform to jump on board. CapCut’s blog post revealed that the new audio and video model, Dreamina Seedance 2.0, is already rolling out to the platform, with ByteDance stating that the model will allow creators to draft, edit, and sync video and audio content using simple text prompts, images, or reference videos. And while that’s great news for CapCut and AI video generation, it’s a step back for those who thought the AI-slop tide was just starting to turn. Related OpenAI pulled the plug on Sora without warning — even Disney didn’t see it coming Disney’s $1 billion deal with the AI slop merchant is dusted. Seedance 2.0 is going straight to CapCut Meet your favorite new …

Disney Pulls Out of B. Deal with OpenAI’s Video Platform Sora

Disney Pulls Out of $1 B. Deal with OpenAI’s Video Platform Sora

Published by José Betancourt

In a surprise move, OpenAI will shut down its Sora AI video app, just months after it was first launched. “We’re saying goodbye to Sora. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you,” the company said in a statement. “What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing. We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.” A source familiar with the matter tells The Hollywood Reporter that Disney is also exiting the deal it signed with OpenAI last year, in which it pledged to invest $1 billion in the company and agreed to license some of its characters for use in Sora. Related Articles OpenAI, led by CEO Sam Altman, is not getting out of the AI video business (AI video is one of many tools that can take form in the ChatGPT app), of course, but it appears the standalone Sora app will be a casualty of its evolving ambitions. Sora launched last fall, shocking and awing Hollywood with its free use …

OpenAI pulled the plug on Sora without warning — even Disney didn’t see it coming

OpenAI pulled the plug on Sora without warning — even Disney didn’t see it coming

Published by skeptic

It’s finally happened: OpenAI just pulled the plug on Sora, its AI video creation tool. First introduced in 2024, OpenAI presented the AI video generation app as the future of film and cinema, even signing a high-profile $1 billion licensing deal with Disney to bring its characters to the platform. Now, less than two years later, OpenAI is consigning Sora to the AI slop-heap, helping us say goodbye to some of the utter dross the tool helped create, and freeing Disney from its deal. I’m sure, like many, I’m not alone in seeing no downside to OpenAI’s decision. I’d even go so far as to call it a victory for the internet on many levels, removing one of the most pointless AI-driven slop machines we’ve seen since the AI boom. But before we count our AI-generated chickens before they hatch, there is a reminder that, as we’ve seen before, OpenAI will be back with something different — that could be even worse. Related I Tried Recreating My Real-Life Videos With Sora: Here’s How It Went …

OpenAI Enters Its Focus Era by Killing Sora

OpenAI Enters Its Focus Era by Killing Sora

Published by skeptic

OpenAI said Tuesday it would discontinue Sora, its AI video app, roughly six months after launch. The company also said it would shutter the Sora API that allowed developers and Hollywood studios to access the text-to-video model. The move shows how the ChatGPT-maker is trying to focus its efforts ahead of a planned IPO. OpenAI’s chief financial officer Sarah Friar said in an interview with CNBC Tuesday that OpenAI needs to be “ready to be a public company.” Since ChatGPT’s launch, CEO Sam Altman has run the company like Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley incubator he used to lead, placing bets on a wide range of products. This includes Sora, as well as a browser, a family of hardware devices, robots, and Codex, its AI-powered coding agent. These efforts have had varying levels of success, and Sora’s growth in particular has stalled in recent months. After peaking at 3.3 million worldwide downloads across iOS and Android in November 2025, downloads of the Sora app fell to just 1.1 million by February 2026, according to the …

OpenAI’s Sora shutting down as Disney exits deal

OpenAI’s Sora shutting down as Disney exits deal

Published by skeptic

Pour one out for Sora, the groundbreaking — but quickly overtaken — video generation app from OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT. Born Dec. 2024, and baptized by a billion-dollar Disney deal a year later, Sora was axed by OpenAI on Tuesday — and the Disney deal was trashed alongside it. “We’re saying goodbye to the Sora app,” the Sora team announced Tuesday via the OpenAI X feed. “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.” OpenAI did not confirm reports that Sora would soon be available within ChatGPT itself, but did promise to “share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.” This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Sora launched to great fanfare. Some of us even wondered if the launch could herald a new cinematic medium. But it was soon eclipsed by other more fully-featured AI video generation apps such …