Sora is a social media app, built on a text-to-video model of the same name developed by OpenAI. The model generates short video clips based on user text prompts, and can also extend existing short videos. After OpenAI showed some examples from the model in February,[1] the first generation of Sora was released publicly for ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Pro users in the US and Canada in December 2024,[2][3] and the second generation of Sora was released to select users in the US and Canada at the end of September 2025.[4] It integrates social media features.[5][6]
By default, the generator uses copyrighted material in its videos (unless copyright holders actively opt-out of having their content included), while videos contain a visible, moving digital watermark to prevent misuse. However, only 7 days after Sora 2 release, third-party programs, which successfully removed the compulsory watermark, had become prevalent.
History
A woman walking down a Tokyo street at night, first generation, February 2024
Several other text-to-video generating models had been created prior to Sora, including Meta's Make-A-Video, Runway's Gen-2, and Google's Veo 3, the last of which, as of February 2024,[update] is also still in its research phase.[7]OpenAI, the company behind Sora, had released DALL·E 3, the third of its DALL-E text-to-image models, in September 2023.[8]
The team that developed Sora named it after the Japanese word for 'sky' to signify its "limitless creative potential".[9] On February 15, 2024, OpenAI first previewed Sora by releasing multiple clips of high-definition videos that it created, including an SUV driving down a mountain road, an animation of a "short fluffy monster" next to a candle, two people walking through Tokyo in the snow, and fake historical footage of the California gold rush, and stated that it was able to generate videos up to one minute long.[7] The company then shared a technical report, which highlighted the methods used to train the model.[10][11] OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also posted a series of tweets, responding to Twitter users' prompts with Sora-generated videos of the prompts.
Releases
As of December 9, 2024, OpenAI had gradually made Sora available to the public for ChatGPT Pro and ChatGPT Plus users in the US and Canada. Prior to this, the company had provided limited access to a small "red team", including experts in misinformation and bias, to perform adversarial testing on the model.[8] The company also shared Sora with a small group of creative professionals, including video makers and artists, to seek feedback on its usefulness in creative fields.[12] In February 2025, OpenAI announced plans to integrate Sora into ChatGPT by letting users generate Sora videos from the chatbot.[13]
Sora 2 was unveiled on September 30, 2025 with an iOS app at the same time.[4] All videos generated by the model feature a visible, moving watermark to prevent misuse behaviours of the tool[14]. The previous version of Sora also used a safety watermark to let the audience distinguish between real and fictional content.[15] Only 7 days later, on October 7, 2025, 404 Media reported that third-party programs which successfully removed the compulsory watermark from Sora 2 videos had become prevalent.[16]
By default, the generator uses copyrighted material in its videos unless copyright holders actively opt-out of having their content included.[17][18]
Legal regulation
Intellectual property
In November 2024, an API key for Sora access was leaked by a group of testers on Hugging Face, who posted a manifesto stating that they were protesting that Sora was used for "art washing". OpenAI revoked all access three hours after the leak was made public, and stated that "hundreds of artists" have shaped the development, and that "participation is voluntary."[19][20][21]
On its launch, Sora 2 allowed copyrighted content by default, unless copyright holders were to contact OpenAI and opt-out of the generation of their content on the platform.[22] On October 3, 2025, OpenAI stated that a future update to Sora 2 would give copyright holders "more granular control" over the generation of copyrighted content, though OpenAI did not state if existing content would be removed.[23] On October 6, the chairman of the MPA criticized OpenAI's approach to copyright on Sora 2.[24]
Capabilities and limitations
A video generated by Sora of someone lying in a bed with a cat on it, containing several mistakes
The technology behind Sora is an adaptation of the technology behind DALL-E 3. According to OpenAI, Sora is a diffusion transformer[25] – a denoising latent diffusion model with one Transformer as the denoiser. A video is generated in latent space by denoising 3D "patches", then transformed to standard space by a video decompressor. Re-captioning is used to augment training data, by using a video-to-text model to create detailed captions on videos.[11]
OpenAI trained the model using publicly available videos as well as copyrighted videos licensed for the purpose, but did not reveal the number or the exact source of the videos.[9] Upon its release, OpenAI acknowledged some of Sora's shortcomings, including its struggling to simulate complex physics, to understand causality, and to differentiate left from right.[26] One example shows a group of wolf pups seemingly multiplying and converging, creating a hard-to-follow scenario.[27] OpenAI also stated that, in adherence to the company's existing safety practices, Sora will restrict text prompts for sexual, violent, hateful, or celebrity imagery, as well as content featuring pre-existing intellectual property.[8]
Tim Brooks, a researcher on Sora, stated that the model figured out how to create 3D graphics from its dataset alone, while Bill Peebles, also a Sora researcher, said that the model automatically created different video angles without being prompted.[7] According to OpenAI, Sora-generated videos are also tagged with C2PA metadata to indicate that they are AI processed.[9]
Reception
In 2024, Will Douglas Heaven of the MIT Technology Review called the demonstration videos "impressive", but noted that they must have been cherry-picked and may not be representative of Sora's typical output.[12] American academic Oren Etzioni expressed concerns over the technology's ability to create online disinformation for political campaigns.[9] For Wired, Steven Levy similarly wrote that it had the potential to become "a misinformation train wreck" and opined that its preview clips were "impressive" but "not perfect" and that it "show[ed] an emergent grasp of cinematic grammar" due to its unprompted shot changes. Levy added, "[i]t will be a very long time, if ever, before text-to-video threatens actual filmmaking."[7] Lisa Lacy of CNET called its example videos "remarkably realistic – except perhaps when a human face appears close up or when sea creatures are swimming".[8]
Filmmaker Tyler Perry announced he would be putting a planned $800 million expansion of his Atlanta studio on hold, expressing concern about Sora's potential impact on the film industry.[28][29]
2025
In October 2025, The New York Times remarked that the release of the Sora 2 app in September 2025 was "jaw-dropping (for better and worse)" though also remarked that the app was a "social network in disguise" and "the type of product that companies like Meta and X have sought to build: a way to bring A.I. to the masses that people can share." The article expressed concern regarding the product's potential impact on society and its potential use to promote misinformation, disinformation, and scams.[30]
OpenAI came under controversy over character generation after Sora 2 produced several videos that featured copyrighted characters. The company stated it would work with rights holders to block characters from Sora at their request, giving copyright holders more control.[31]
Various estates of celebrities have threatened legal action against OpenAI's Sora 2 app, due to deepfake videos being created of their likeness, including celebrities that have passed away.[32] The estate of Michael Jackson reportedly filed a copyright complaint[33], after videos were created of his likeness stealing people's chicken nuggets, performing Jackass style stunts, and arguing with Adolf Hitler on Maury over who invented the moonwalk, amongst other content. Family members of the late comedians Robin Williams and George Carlin also urged OpenAI to take action against 'hurtful videos' and to restrict deepfakes of their loved ones.[34]
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