OpenAI pulls AI video app Sora as concerns grow on deepfake videos

This is first big step by the ChatGPT maker to focus its business on potentially more lucrative areas, such as coding tools.OpenAI is shutting down its social media app Sora, which went viral towards the end of last year as a place to share short-form videos generated by artificial intelligence but also raised alarms in Hollywood and elsewhere.OpenAI said in a brief social media message on Tuesday that it was “saying goodbye to the Sora app” and that it would share more soon about how to preserve what users had already created on the app.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Long lines, unpaid TSA workers: Experts say US air travel system in crisislist 2 of 4Indian police manage long lines as panic grows over fuel shortageslist 3 of 4Philippine president declares energy emergency as impact of Iran war feltlist 4 of 4US jury orders Meta to pay $375m for endangering childrenend of list“What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing,” it said.The company behind ChatGPT released Sora in September as an attempt to capture the attention, and potentially advertising dollars, that follow short-form videos on TikTok, YouTube or Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook.But a growing chorus of advocacy groups, academics and experts expressed concerns about the dangers of letting people create AI videos on just about anything they can type into a prompt, leading to the proliferation of nonconsensual images and realistic deepfakes in a sea of less harmful “AI slop”.OpenAI was forced to crack down on AI creations of public figures – among them, Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr and Mister Rogers – doing outlandish things, but only after an outcry from family estates and an actors’ union.Disney, which made a deal with OpenAI last year to bring its characters to Sora, said in a statement on Tuesday that it respects “OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere”.But Disney did not see the move coming, the Reuters news agency reported.