RJ Writing Ink Celebrates the end of the Sora App

Good riddance to ya, Sora! Good riddance to ya, Sora! Good riddance to ya, Soraaaaaa!!! You lousy, energy-hogging hack!

Oh, what a lovely time it is to be a content creator, people. Matt Braly is killing it with his Kickstarter for his new indie show, Clara and the Below. The Amazing Digital Circus just broke records with 2 million people watching its penultimate episode. And best of all, Sora, an AI app that dragged our boy from Kingdom Hearts‘ name through the mud, is dead! And the humans who make a living creating videos and stories couldn’t be happier, myself included.

It’s crazy to think how less than a few years ago, using AI in everyday life was in the realm of science fiction. But in that short amount of time, artificial intelligence has progressed so fast that it can be described as frightening. First ChatGPT was a thing, and then a few months ago, we now had to deal with Sora. By just inputting a prompt into a text box, you could then turn it into a video. And the part that was both fascinating yet terrifying was just how realistic those videos could be. If someone was able to create a detailed enough prompt, they could make something that could fool even the most observant of viewers.

And that raised a lot of alarm bells in the entertainment industry.

Remember What South Park Said about Sora?

In their last season, South Park dedicated an entire episode to satirizing the then newly-released Sora. They joked about people could use it to make content based on existing IPs without consent, or create videos that could fool particularly gullible people. However, the truth was that Sora was a nightmare for people in the entertainment industry. It was already bad enough that AI was taking the need to create out of the hands of the people who livelihoods depended on it, like writers. But now it was flooding the internet with convincing deepfakes! I myself have found plenty of AI videos in my YouTube feed!

Thankfully, though, it seems like the AI bubble is starting to pop, and Sora is now a casualty. On March 24th, 2026, OpenAI announced that they were shutting down Sora just months after its launch. The reason: it’s hemorrhaging money!

I’ve been watching the news regarding AI on social for a while now, and a big one is how astronomically expensive running an AI is. All the customers need to worry about is the cost of a subscription, but the companies, the ones giving them access to the AI, has to pay for everything else. Between having to find or make room for data centers, providing maintenance for said centers, and the amount of energy required to keep them running, they’re losing money faster than they can make it. In addition to the cost, there is also the environmental concerns to consider. In an age where most people want to become more energy efficient and ease the strain on the planet, that’s not a good look!

Also, and this is a personal gripe, I don’t like how OpenAI named the app Sora. I’m a huge Kingdom Hearts fan, and I don’t appreciate him having to share his name with the app.

Disney To OpenAi, “DEAL’S OFF!”

And the news gets even better. Previously, Disney had announced a deal with OpenAI, promising to invest money in the company in exchange for licensing some of its characters. To put it simply, this would have meant that Disney+ would have been overrun with Sora-generated videos that few people were asking for or wanted. However, that deal is now off. For the time being, we won’t have to see the characters we love get turned into cheap, dime-store mush.

I’ve already seen several content creators that I follow online celebrating the end of Sora, and for good reason. Not only does something like Sora cheapen the value of works we love, but it can put a lot of people out of a job in a time when they can’t afford it. Plus, the further we dive into developing AI, the greater the chance there is that we create one that becomes self-aware. And unless we want to deal with something like Skynet, Ultron, or, heaven forbid, AM, then that is a matter that should be treated very carefully.

Now, I’m not fully disparaging the use of AI. As a tool, it could help people who have wanted to create but lack the knowledge or resources to do so, see their vision come to life. However, that shouldn’t make it a crutch! We still need to learn how to get it to do what we want and make it look good. And until that day comes, I don’t think Sora is a good idea.

So, yeah. So long, Sora. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!