Goodbye to Sora • Hacker News Board

Re: Goodbye to Sora

#321

Post by johnfn » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 1:51 AM UTC

As someone who generally liked the products that OpenAI puts out, I think Sora was their first product that I really didn't like. I liked GPT primarily because I felt like it respected me: I never felt like it was trying to distract me from my work or get me to waste time doomscrolling. It's primary value proposition to keep me using it wasn't to trick me with addictive content, but to get me high quality answers as fast as possible. And I felt like OpenAI's other products, like Deep Research, agent mode, etc, were the same way. Even Atlas, although I suspect it will be equally ill-fated, attempts to follow this same pattern. It really felt like OpenAI was separating themselves from the common popular apps like Tiktok, Reddit, Instagram, etc, which seemed to exist entirely to distract me from things I care about and waste my time.

Sora was the first product OpenAI shipped where I felt that fell into that second category, and for that I was very disappointed. You have all those GPUs, and the most incredible technology in the world, and the most brilliant engineers, and all you can think to do with them is to make an app that just makes meme videos? I mean, c'mon!

Still, I am mystified by how rapidly Sora went from launch to shutdown. Does anyone have any guess what happened there? Even if Sora wasn't a spectacular success, it seems to me like subsequent model improvements could have moved the needle - shutting it down so soon seems premature. I mean, what if this is the equivalent of making ChatGPT with GPT 3?

Re: Goodbye to Sora

#322

Post by userbinator » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 1:53 AM UTC

foolfoolz wrote: post #62

as a sora user: - sora was not great at making what you asked - i probably got 3 good videos out of 100 gens - every video that was good needed editing outside of sora (and therefore could not be shared within sora) just my experience

- i probably got 3 good videos out of 100 gens

My experience with AI image generation is similar, although with a higher success rate (depending on how accurate you want the result to be); but indeed, filtering is a major part of the process.

Re: Goodbye to Sora

#323

Post by k3k3 » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

this_user wrote: post #293

small_model wrote: post #158

Not good, seems like they are running out of cash and partners abandoning them. They had no real moat to be fair. Anthropic eating their lunch in enterprise and other players have cashflows from other businesses (XAI, Google)

They wasted their first mover advantage by focussing on what amounts to building toys for consumers like Sora instead of actually useful products that go beyond simple chat bots. I think they are in serious trouble, especially with the size of their cash burn. Their planned IPO could easily turn out to be their WeWork moment where the bottom suddenly falls out on the valuation if they cannot make their operation look…

Agreed. They are pretty close to distress IMO. This cash-injection gets them to where, an IPO? I dunno, people might be spooked by then.

Will be interesting to see.

Re: Goodbye to Sora

#324

Post by CamelCaseName » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 1:56 AM UTC

The owner of @Sora on twitter must be really regretting turning down the $20MM buyout offer for the handle!

Re: Goodbye to Sora

#325

Post by topherPedersen » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 1:57 AM UTC

ex-aws-dude wrote: post #47

The thing that didn't make sense with this app: who would ever want to scroll only AI generated videos over a combined feed? In practice people would just generate the videos with the app then post them on regular social media in which case OAI would not get the ad revenue for that Its the age-old "your product is just a subset of another product"

I never used Sora to watch content, but there was a guy on TikTok that used to post these great Sora generated videos that I really liked. Honestly, I was kind of surprised to hear that they were shutting this app down today.

Re: Goodbye to Sora

#326

Post by carefree-bob » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

k3k3 wrote: post #316

dangus wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something about your phrasing is such hilarious techbrained spin. Let’s be real: OpenAI is circling the drain. The company with the fraudster serial liar CEO who said he was gonna spend a trillion dollars can’t keep a video service alive right after signing a $1 billion dollar with Disney ? What kind of a joke is that? This is a company that has blown its opportunity twiddling around with zero product. They still jus…

Why was Sam brought back? Swear it's all gone downhill for them since that debacle re. firing him.

Sam was brought back because there was no one to replace him. The non-profit types on the board were living in a consensus bubble that didn't extend far beyond a small inner circle, and they discovered that they didn't have sufficient support from the engineers who had lots of other employment options and threatened to quit if Altman wasn't reinstated. Altman himself had no problem finding a replacement job in a matter of hours, and the board was looking at a business drained of talent in a cut-throat tech race.

I'm no fan of Altman or OpenAI, it's a pretty shady company and I am suspicious of their books, but this was a great demonstration of the uselessness of boards and how out of touch they are with the business they are supposed to be supervising. It's really rare to find an effective board, primarily they sit like a House of Lords enjoying ceremonial perks and a stipend in exchange for holding a few meetings a year.

Re: Goodbye to Sora

#327

Post by razvan_maftei » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

I can't imagine they were getting a good return on it. And frankly, nothing tht came out of Sora was consequential in a positive way. The tech is cool, but only works if the content generation is heavily guardrailed and most of it ends up as content farming fodder anyway.

Re: Goodbye to Sora

#328

Post by WWilliam » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 2:01 AM UTC

[flagged]

Re: Goodbye to Sora

#329

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 2:06 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #196

1bpp wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think you’re fumbling on an important distinction. Sometimes people want to paint, sometimes people want a painting. To have wonderful time with their mom… I bet they had absolutely zero interest in the act and process of making silly videos.

[deleted]

Re: Goodbye to Sora

#330

Post by 152334H » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 2:09 AM UTC

the invisible hand of the market strangles its strongest adherents

The desire for something "new", for a Mildly Ethical product, killed off the most obvious path to success - to actually just make TikTok+AIGC, or in the present, Douyin+Seedance2.