Technology
OpenAI’s invite-only video generation app Sora tops Apple’s App Store
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OpenAI now has two of the top three free apps in Apple’s App Store, and its new video generation app Sora has snagged the coveted No. 1 spot.
The artificial intelligence startup launched Sora on Tuesday, and it allows users to generate short-form AI videos, remix videos created by other users and post them to a shared feed. Sora is only available on iOS devices and is invite-based, which means users need a code to access it.
Despite these restrictions, Sora has secured the top spot in the App Store, ahead of Google‘s Gemini and OpenAI’s generative chatbot ChatGPT.
“It’s been epic to see what the collective creativity of humanity is capable of so far,” Bill Peebles, head of Sora at OpenAI, wrote in a post on X on Friday. “Team is iterating fast and listening to feedback.”
Sora is powered by OpenAI’s latest video and audio generation model called Sora 2. OpenAI said the model is capable of creating scenes and sounds with “a high degree of realism,” according to a blog post. The startup’s first video and audio generation model, Sora, was announced in February 2024.
OpenAI said it has taken steps to address potential safety concerns around the Sora app, including giving users explicit control over how their likeness is used on the platform. But some of the initial videos posted to the app, including one that depicts OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shoplifting, have sparked debates about its utility, potential for harm and legality.
“It is easy to imagine the degenerate case of AI video generation that ends up with us all being sucked into an RL-optimized slop feed,” Altman wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. “The team has put great care and thought into trying to figure out how to make a delightful product that doesn’t fall into that trap, and has come up with a number of promising ideas.”