OpenAI has surprisingly announced the sudden shutdown of its popular AI video creation app Sora — which only launched last year — without providing any explanation. The OpenAI team informed users on Tuesday that it appreciates everyone who used Sora to create content and understands the disappointment this news brings. This announcement came just three months after OpenAI secured a three-year agreement with Disney. Originally, Disney had planned to use its characters to create videos for audiences through Sora and ChatGPT Images in early 2026, but Disney has now ended its partnership with OpenAI. The partnership had also included plans for Disney to invest up to $1 billion in OpenAI. OpenAI's second-generation Sora, released in late September 2025, was capable of creating highly realistic videos, but it became a major concern for Hollywood. Because rights holders who wanted their work removed from the system had to request it themselves, Japan-based organization CODA — including Studio Ghibli — demanded that their content not be used to train Sora. With Sora now shut down, text-to-video creation through ChatGPT will no longer be available. Other AI video creation platforms still exist, but some of them have been accused of copyright infringement by Disney and other Hollywood studios. Even before reaching an agreement with OpenAI, Disney had already sent copyright infringement warnings to Google, Meta, and Character AI, and partnered with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros Discovery to sue Midjourney and Minimax. More recently, major studios including Paramount, Sony, and Netflix took legal action against Chinese company ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 AI system. Ref: Variety