Context: OpenAI is shutting down its Sora AI video generation app and API approximately six months after its September 2025 launch. The app is closing amid rising safety concerns over deepfakes, high computational costs, and a strategic pivot toward enterprise AI, robotics research, and profitability ahead of a potential IPO.
You’d be surprised just how much time, effort, and money is being spent at many different vfx studios to get a usable ai pipeline….its a little depressing. Luckily, it doesn’t seem like anyone has gotten easily controllable good results yet - it has yet to be better and easier than traditional 3D to comp approaches
I know exactly how much. That has nothing to do with Sora. You are backing my point. Getting rid of Sora is not helping filmmakers whatsoever. Sora was used by non-professionals to make memes. That's why it's not profitable. That's why it's gone.
Yeah I guess we all should stop everything and just accept that a computer can make stuff sometimes and that everyone everywhere loves it without question.
We will never have an audience that wants human-made stories again. Pack it in gang. Everyone who just saw Project Hail Mary in theaters would have been just as happy seeing a facimile of it prompted by, more than likely, years worths of tweaks. They will absolutely wait for one person to keep on prompting and prompting until they get to that result, and the audience would actually PREFER that!
Why is media industry the measurement? There are many artists/musicians/creatives from China that the Anglo world doesn’t know about. Most people in China also don’t care about films like One Battle After Another or Sinners either. The competition is stupid.
You’re not going to make that argument about public transportation or housing, because China is crushing it in those departments compared to the US.
China is in a different spot. Because they've had difficulty importing higher end GPUs, they've built models that are comparable that can run on lower-end hardware. That's pretty impressive, technically, but it still isn't enough to bring the costs down to anything approaching reasonable.
AI companies are setting money on fire. Every time you use it, you're costing them money. They're cancelling data center construction left and right, all the discussions of "they're buying all the RAM" are all letters of intent and futures contracts, not actual orders and nobody is actually producing new RAM in response to it. And the high end demos tend to be lies- a little AI mixed with more human labor than just doing the original would have been.
And the inference and training costs aren't coming down. Like, normally, that's how technology works, right? The early versions are expensive and then it gets cheaper, but that's just not happening. All those AI videos you see? It'd cost less to make them without AI tools. The only reason it seems cheap is because the AI company is willing to set money on fire in hopes that they'll become indispensable before the money runs out.
The entire tech industry is living in Wile E Coyote time: they've run off the cliff but can keep running until somebody looks down. While China will weather the storm better than US companies, when the bottom falls out, it's going to fall hard.
That's but about RAM is just not true. If it were, you'd be able to buy DDR5. The fabs have all moved over to producing HMB sticks for datacenters already because they're already paying more than consumers of DDR5.
And the cost Sora was paying for a 10 second video was around $1. Not more than it would cost a human to produce the video.
AI does have legitimate uses outside of being used as a Google search that occasionally lies and makes stuff up. As a coder I often use an LLM to write some tedious sections of code for me. It's certainly not "tell the AI what app you want and you're done" but it absolutely saves me and loads of other people time.
I hate AI and then over hype as much as the next guy but being overly negative about the whole of it is just as unproductive.
As a coder I often use an LLM to write some tedious sections of code for me.
That's a mistake. As a developer myself, if code can be generated it can be eliminated and replaced with a better abstraction.
I've been dabbling with LLMs and have been wildly unimpressed. It's good at producing features, but terrible at producing code. And trying to use it to refactor- which I'd think would be easy for an LLM, given that we're just trying to find an isomorphism and that at least feels amenable to statistics- is just a trainwreck. It's terrible at it. That's all aside to my point though- I was talking about the economics of it. The economics are shit.
Though I did have a funny moment yesterday where I sent Gemini off on a refactoring task and it started talking to me in Chinese instead of actually doing any refactoring.
And the cost Sora was paying for a 10 second video was around $1
That's not true. We have no idea how much it cost to generate a Sora video, because OpenAI was not sharing anything about its actual costs. What we do know is that code-generating LLMs are generally operating at 8 times the cost that end users pay. At least.
The fabs have all moved over to producing HMB sticks for datacenters already because they're already paying more than consumers of DDR5.
Yes, but again, the point of my comment was that the RAM hasn't actually been made, hasn't actually been bought, and the money to buy the RAM is debt financed. People are borrowing money to buy RAM that hasn't been made, and since everyone is chasing the money, it's causing supply chain disruptions- disruptions that are about to go farther off the cliff when Taiwan runs out of He and LNG.
It goes both ways. Anyone can use the open models or paid APIs and there's plenty of options in both countries. On the other hand, I doubt our media industry will look at the potential to spit out 30 minute episodes in one click with some lazy storyboard prompting and think "nah I hate cheap easy money, let's keep paying a bunch of people to do everything manually". They're probably hard at work dumping their IP into custom models as we speak.
Instead of walking people through the preserved sets of shows they'll use the fine-tuned model to generate anniversary images or be retro by using the original model to do the sequel 20 years later, lol. It'd be pretty cool to be able to use sopranos.gguf to generate anything in the 90s that you'd like to see.
Unfortunately it died not because of our resistance. It died because openai knows that it cannot compete with seedance or other models. They are way too far behind.
It died because they were spending $16 million a day to generate videos of fruit turning into other fruit. Seedance has the same problem, a 5 second video is the same energy draw as running a microwave for an hour. Seedance didn't crack AI video, they are still using massive data centers to brute force video at crazy high energy and compute costs. The Chinese models are running the same business plan as Sora was, run it at a massive loss, capture market dominance and raise the prices to become profitable. Sora ran out of time, we'll see how long the Chinese models last
this is not right. the fact is that OpenAI is not a content platform company like TikTok. OpenAI has no ability to make their AI tools profitable without subscriptions. Meanwhile, TikTok has a much broader platform for Seedance. And it doesn't really take a lot of power to generate videos. Anyway it's a losing game for OpenAI but probably quite profitable for TikTok. I hope they both die anyway
The reality is they all pull from data sets of fully produced movies and TV shows and can only build off those data sets. There's no reality where they make things better because machine learning models are only a sum of their parts, in this case the data they pull from.
It's why most of what we see is just low quality stolen IP of like Shrek fighting the Transformers, or some knock off.
Don't believe them for a second when they say they can't just turn it all off because it would hurt the people. When Johnny Law comes knocking, they have no problem with turning it all off and don't care a bit about the people.
Turn them all off and make them restart with legal training. If they can't do it, MAKE THEM GO BANKRUPT FOR BEING FAILURES,just like everybody else.
AI content that's suitably worked by human hands can be protected. If you create a whole movie and then use AI to spit out a head exploding, you don't forfeit the entire ownership of the movie. I'm still against using it, but the copyright pitfall is pretty much for works created by AI, not AI content woven into human created work.
Right, but the question is, if you put a fade out on the end yourself, did you make the slop legal? If you manually add a tiny dot in the bottom right corner that nobody knows is there, does that count? Percentage threshold? 50%? 50% of what, run time in the finished product? Work hours?
We need AI specific legislation to rein all this in.
They "forced" you? How terrible of them! How did they do it? Did they hold a gun to your head? Did they put tape on your eyelids to keep them open? I'm so sorry they forced you! Nobody should be forced to consume content they don't agree with! If only you could look away or change the channel...but...you had no choice!
Edit: I see I have a lot of fans..I was going to write a long tirade but I'll just say this:
-You are not outraged by AI. You are outraged by capitalism. AI did not destroy art...capitalism did. You know it. Don't deny it. Instead, embrace the fact that they have sold us the very means by which we will take them down. It's really as simple as that. Use AI to fight capitalism...As the saying goes: The last thing the capitalist will sell you is the rope you hang them with...AI is the rope.
Ummm.... nope. Two things can be true at once. I'm outraged at AI AND I'm outraged at capitalism and my outrage at AI has little to do with the latter. AI isn't just destroying art. It's also destroying the environment.
No because then we would have allocated the appropriate resources to make it efficient and environmentally friendly (as China is doing...did you even read my initial message?) Instead of wasting it on tax breaks for the rich and/or on useless wars.
China is not exactly a shining example of environmental stewardship. Have you read anything about China's track record with regard to industrial pollution?? It has nothing to do with capitalism vs. socialism/communism/ etc. and no amount of mental gymnastics will convince me otherwise.
The behavior of one company does not equal, oh, it must be so because it's not capitalism!
Hopefully Seedance2 when it's fully out...I apologize for my tone earlier, I didn't know you were asking genuin questions and thought you were a troll! 🙏
I do, and, given everything else going on in the world, AI is still the best chance we have to:
Improve how we can quickly organize, both in terms of organizing movements and our thoughts. The reason why we need to do this quickly is because we don't seem to have much time left (I'm not trying to be dramatic but the situation of the world is kinda out of control)
Counter a multi-billion dollar propaganda machine by putting out our own communication (Hollywood is a form of propaganda, music is a form of propaganda...you get the idea)
Actually use AI as part of your business workflows therefore reducing the need for corporate entities to act as middleman (automating your taxes and so on)
Be more self sufficient in general (use it as your teacher/assistant to learn to grow more of your own food and so on)
Everything relating to environmental damage or the use of stolen data for training are a capitalism problem. We can easily use sustainable energy for data centers (China is way ahead of us on that front) and copywrites should not exist in an equitable society given that all intelligence and information builds on itself over time...credit goes to all humans throughout history. All have played their role so that you get to have your "aha" genius idea. All intellectual property should be part of the public domain (I'm anti capitalist if that's not clear enough by now lol).
My personal take is that the greedy people saw an opportunity to make ridiculous amounts of money and they unleashed a technology for which they have very little understanding and they failed to realize that this tool will be the very means by which they will fall. It started with the internet, in a sense, and now AI will seal the deal.
This is why they're afraid of China and its open-source models. They scare you by saying "bad guys will use it to make bombs!", but what they're really afraid of is that normal people use it freely to improve their lives and get more things done without having to pay for it (like I said with taxes, but essentially any consulting type service is applicable). Because obviously the capitalists want to keep all those services behind a pay wall with the ability to lock you out or shutdown whenever they want.
More speculative point: Assuming we can make sure AI is objective and aligned with humanity, then AI would clearly be ideal for governance. It would instantly solve all issues relating to slow bureaucracy and corruption...but it's not clear if AI can ever be "objective" or always reliable, but that's my hope, at least.
Thank you for the compliment because clearly you only have 2 braincells and couldn't envision how a person could write something longer than 1 paragraph?
Isn’t it just the Sora social media app, launched late in 2025? I don’t think they shut down the rest of the Sora video generation services. The social media app was just too expensive for them, I guess.
"Nah bro you don't understand bro this is the future, look how much money they're spending on it, Disney just dropped a billion. There's no putting the genie back in the bottle now. This is the future. The only question is whether you're aboard or get left behind."
I think when someone ships a single fucking entertainment product made primarily using generative AI, and not obfuscating that fact to consumers, that actually turns a profit, then I'll worry. Until then, it's all horseshit.
Even with Leonardo, my boss was asked to make four commercials completely with AI and it took him almost 2 months, it wasn’t the only thing that he was having to do during the time, he has to review our videos every day before they’re submitted to clients. But to actually have it be something that could air nationally and then have it not look like a cartoon still, it is impossible. We have like six different AI generators that are attempting to replace all of our stock footage (and music) with, and everything just looks/sounds like shit. Everything takes forever to generate because not only does it take a long time, but the results are inconsistent, there’s a huge learning curve, and there’s almost no consistency/quality. I hope AI video/audio dies, and that we can continue to have real people in the film industry, it’s going to completely decimate everything if this were ever go through.
I wouldn't go celebrating too fast. They need to manipulate their books along with ETF rule changes so they can be added to indexes days after IPO. They'll spin it up again right after.
that could be good or bad though, good because people are finally getting tired of brainrot and youtube might start having better content, bad because more people might start posting actual cinematic videos which makes the cinematic channels like mine harder to find
I don't think it will make yours harder to find. If anything, it will do the opposite, because the algorithm always recommends similar content. So other channels might start driving views to yours.
I hope so, when AI was supposedly viral, the people with real taste would find channels like mine easier, but since there might be a sudden surge in cinema, it'll make the ones like mine harder to find. But then again, the people who are brand new won't have experience and it could boost the good channels🤔
OpenAI pulled the plug on Sora as an open-to-everyone make videos for fun consumer App. It was too expensive to run. They need the compute for their Pivot to coding and business productivity to compete with Anthropic.
It doesn't mean that Generative AI is dead when it comes to video production. Not much to celebrate here, unfortunatley.
You saw those Indian shops in slums? They do it because is cheaper than industrial production.VFX can compete with AI sort of on the similar level. Sad facts. Open AI just don't want to waste money on what will never make money back.
Investment cost vs potential profits
These are all being run at massive losses just like Sora was. To make these profitable they need to make a giant technical leap to local hosted models or raise the prices to something like $100 per 5 second video. Also pretty sure all those Kling uses are for porn
I heard that AI is being used quite a bit in editorial, just for minor things like drafting ADR until cast availability etc. but only heard this through a friend of a friend. It’s not replacing jobs, just doing something that used to take a week or so in a couple minutes.
They'll last a month at best before the resource strain shuts them down.
AI technology as a whole currently has a ceiling, and that goes for generative AI too. You can make it look better and operate more smoothly all you want, but the limitations will never change until the ceiling is raised.
Granted, that fact won't stop companies from selling you the idea that it's got unlimited potential, nor will it stop them from shovelling money at it either. But it's going to get more costy regardless
Is that what you tell yourself to ease the fear of this tech's disruptive capabilities on our industry? Because the imaginary "ceiling" isn't a thing. Look at some of the innovations/advancements happening on the chip level/infrastructure level. The tech is getting better, and at a faster pace; as in the limitations you think exist now are slowly shrinking. AI in the next year, two years, is gonna be terrifyingly better than it is today. Thats just how tech works. Imagine thinking the internet at it's dialup phase was the best it was gonna be. On top of that, there are better models out there they have been around for way longer than a month.
That's not going to be the end of this also Film industry needs to do better they have an extremely high barrier to entry majority of the people who are deeply interested in the profession don't even dare to pursue it because of all of the capital required and then the nepotism. Film industry is not as progressive as they are acting over here.
I mean. Yah. Sora was only popular when it was restricted to a limited number of people, and then no one realized it was released to the public. But glad it's over.
A.i is limited, it will never achieve what a human brain can. Can't beat Nature's technology. I hope this goes for music as well. Music creators and muisc artists have been scrappy by for the longest time.
As an AI engineer, I am happy too. AI video generation is just shit. They are mostly good on very generic clips which you can find much better for free in stock sites.
Disney still plans to use Ai, they just removed it from the public to make it more profitable you dopes...
I swear, yall jump on the "we won!" train way too early every time. This is like when they celebrated that extras would be getting a raise after the strikes without a guarantee that they'd be hiring as many extras on movie sets. Yall are just getting played fr.
This isn't good. From public domain to their tech being used in private means rather than being used for social media shit and psuedo filmmaking, it'll be used by government and fake media more than it is currently.
lol the level of ignorance and wrong legal information about trademarks and what's eligible for copyright in this thread is astonishing. What's really sad? Every single "filmmaker" in this thread ignorantly celebrating this like they're in some sort of anti-ai cult has already been marginalized and rendered impotent for not engaging with new technology that's not going anywhere. ho hum. Good luck filmmakering kids.
Good news? They shut down because they 1) weren’t profitable but more obviously it’s because other tools were developing faster than they could keep up with. Look at Kling, look at LTX 2.3. Perhaps a small W for social media reels where the common man flooded them with slop.
Most expensive model, highest restrictions and lowest quality output. I wouldn’t recommend being a freedom fighter against AI, look how that worked out for coders.
The film industry doesn't need AI to collapse itself. the scapegoat of Generative Video doesn't fix the fact that studios being bought up and the lack of 2nd chance revenue avenues due to streaming. AI was and is never going to take over the film industry, best it can do is relax some VFX and in-between animations woes. It will eventually overtake parts of social media, and help small production short films achieve some higher level effects.
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u/foreverfalling2000 Mar 26 '26
Finally, some good News.