OpenAI’s latest app, Sora, lets users conjure realistic, short-form videos from simple text prompts — no camera, crew or editing software required. Built on the upgraded Sora 2 model, it can generate photorealistic avatars, sync dialogue to motion and even simulate real-world physics with cinematic precision. The result is a tool that makes professional-grade video production as easy as typing as typing a sentence or two.
What Is Sora?
Sora is a text-to-video tool developed by OpenAI that generates realistic, short-form clips from written prompts. Built on the Sora 2 model, it can simulate lifelike motion, lighting, and physics to create scenes that look as if they were filmed in the real world. The app also lets users insert digital avatars of themselves, remix clips and share their creations directly within the platform.
But Sora’s meteoric rise has sparked as much concern as it has excitement. Within days of its debut, users began sharing a range of clips that raised both ethical and legal concerns, from eerily realistic deepfakes, to offensive depictions of copyrighted characters, to unsettling recreations of deceased celebrities. OpenAI has since rolled out visible watermarks and opt-out options for copyright holders, but these safeguards have been easy to bypass, leaving the problem far from resolved.
Now, as Sora continues to gain momentum, it’s igniting a bigger debate about the role of generative AI in social media as a whole. If anyone can fabricate convincing-enough videos in a matter of sections, what happens to our sense of truth and authenticity online?
This marks OpenAI’s most significant release since ChatGPT first came on the scene in 2022 — and it could prove to be just as transformative. Beyond demonstrating the potential of this technology, Sora serves as a test of whether AI-generated content can coexist with truth in a digital world already struggling to tell the difference.
What Is Sora?
Sora is an app that turns written prompts into short, realistic videos. It is powered by the Sora 2 model, which has been programmed to produce more stable motion, lifelike physics and better audio syncing than its original version. Users simply describe a scene they want — a crowded city street, a surfer riding a wave, an animal walking through snow — and Sora will generate a minute-long, vertical clip, bringing the description to life.
The app’s standout feature is its ability to generate photorealistic avatars, allowing users to insert themselves or others into any scene imaginable after uploading their likeness. Sora can also be used to remix or extend existing videos, keeping visuals and audio consistent as details are tweaked in a scene — whether it be adjusted camera angles, lighting, movement and scene composition. This gives users more precise control over the final result, without needing professional editing skills or exiting the app.
Like a social media platform, Sora encourages sharing and collaboration. Users can easily post their own creations, engage with other creators and build off one another’s ideas all within the app. By default, every video includes a visible, moving digital watermark of the Sora logo, which is meant to indicate that it was AI-generated — though they can sometimes be removed by third-party tools.
What Can Sora Do?
Sora combines advanced text-to-video generation with tools for editing, collaboration and sharing all in one platform. Here’s a closer look at what exactly the app can do:
Turn Text Into Video
At its core, Sora transforms written prompts into fully animated, high-definition videos. It does so using a diffusion transformer — a neural network architecture that builds scenes in a three-dimensional space before rendering them into realistic animated footage, simulating motion, lighting, object interaction and texture with cinematic precision. The more descriptive the prompt, the more precise the output.
Create Digital Avatars
Using the facial recognition scan completed during the signup process, users can generate digital versions of themselves that move, emote and speak like the real thing. These avatars can then be inserted into any setting or situation imaginable, whether it's a fantastical sci-fi world, realistic recreation of a historical scene or anything in between.
Simulate the Physical World
Sora doesn’t just render basic visuals, it successfully imitates complex real-world physics and 3D environments, simulating things like momentum, buoyancy, collision and object permanence. A tossed basketball arcs naturally and bounces off the backboard instead of just teleporting into a hoop, for example, and a gymnast flips in the air with realistic trajectories, landing with a lifelike weightiness on the mat.
Remix and Edit Video
Existing Sora clips can be modified, layered or remixed with new characters, scenery, soundscapes or stylized filters. Even through complex edits and creative mashups — where users can adjust everything from camera angles to — the app is able to maintain visual and audio continuity. This makes it possible to build upon previous projects, add in new elements and experiment with multiple versions of the same scene.
Automate Multi-Angle Shots
To give users more flexibility, Sora can automatically create multiple different camera angles or perspectives of a single scene. It can pan, zoom and track movement on its own, producing smooth, cinematic transitions that would ordinarily require multiple prompts or manual editing.
Add Realistic, Synchronized Sound
Sora pairs its videos with lifelike audio as well, from environmental sound effects and ambient background noise to full-blown dialogue.The app is capable of generating speech that has a natural cadence and emotion — while also matching up with the character’s mouth movements — helping the creations feel more immersive and realistic.
Social Sharing and Collaboration
Sora also functions as a creative community. Users can publish their videos, remix others’ clips and drop their friends into scenes through cameos. In fact, the platform is explicitly designed to encourage active participation rather than passive scrolling, signalling OpenAI’s push to make generative AI a more social, interactive experience instead of just one built on consumption.
How Do I Use Sora?
Sora is currently invite-only, where each approved person gets four access codes that they can share with others. For now, it is only available for download in the United States and Canada, and no official timeline for international expansion has been released.
Once you’ve secured a code and downloaded the app from the official website or Apple app store, create an account with your email or social login. During signup, Sora will require you to create a three-number code and complete a full face scan, where you film a short clip of yourself looking in multiple directions — up, down, left, right, and directly at the camera — to accurately capture all your facial features.
After completing the face scan, you’ll need to set a secure password and verify your email or phone number before gaining full access. Once your account is verified, you can log in to the app, where the dashboard provides immediate access to all the basics — video creation tools, tutorials and account settings. From the main hub, you can manage your profile, review privacy options or jump straight into your first project.
Who Created Sora?
Sora was developed by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research company known for developing ChatGPT and the advanced models that power it. OpenAI was co-founded in 2015 by current CEO Sam Altman and several other tech entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk, and has received backing from investors such as Microsoft, Thrive Capital, Reid Hoffman and Paypal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel.
The company is also behind notable projects like text-to-image generator DALL-E and Whisper, an automatic speech recognition system. Originally founded as a non-profit, OpenAI set out “to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” as stated in their mission statement from 2015. Its initial goal was to build and distribute AI “as broadly and evenly distributed as possible,” but it has since transitioned toward a more traditional for-profit structure to support large-scale research and commercialization.
Sora Controversies
While Sora has been praised for its technological abilities, its launch also sparked widespread concern over things like privacy, copyright infringement and the ethics of AI-generated content in general. These are the main areas of controversy so far:
Deepfakes and Misuse
Sora doesn’t allow you to make videos of other living people unless you’ve received explicit permission to do so. But, in practice, enforcement has proven to be difficult. Celebrities like Bryan Cranston, Jake Paul and even Sam Altman himself quickly found their likenesses appearing on the app without consent, prompting some to alert SAG-AFTRA for protections. This move led to a joint statement between OpenAI and several major talent agencies, resulting in tighter safeguards within the app.
Even with these measures, misuse, harassment and privacy violations still persist. One journalist who made her likeness publicly available soon discovered popular videos featuring her image being portrayed in a number of fringe fetish scenarios, from pregnancy to belly inflation and “giantess fantasies.” Similar incidents have been reported on other platforms, such as TikTok, where AI-generated deepfakes of private individuals have circulated widely without consent, underscoring just how difficult it is to enforce digital rights in the age of generative media.
Copyright Infringement
Users are also testing the boundaries of copyright law, dropping familiar characters into absurd scenarios — whether it’s Ronald McDonald engaging in a Matrix-style, cheeseburger-flinging duel or Pikachu stealing Poké Balls from CVS. OpenAI initially launched Sora with an opt-out system, placing the burden on studios and creators to explicitly remove permissions in order to keep their copyrighted characters off the platform. But within days, the company switched to an opt-in system instead, offering revenue-sharing for those who choose to participate.
Legal experts warn that, even with the opt-in approach, copyright lawsuits are likely on the horizon as studios weigh whether to permit or restrict use of their intellectual property. International pressure is also mounting, with the Japanese government urging OpenAI to adopt opt-in rules for anime characters, signaling that IP concerns around generative AI are now a global issue.
Dupes of the Deceased
Sora also faced intense backlash after users began creating eerily realistic clips of dead celebrities in fictional, often mocking situations. On TikTok and X, Sora-generated videos have depicted Amy Winehouse doing makeup tutorials, Stephen Hawking being brutally beaten in a UFC match and dropping into a half pipe, Elvis Presley crashing out on stage and friendliest neighbor Fred Rogers launching a scooter stunt into a mud-pit on an episode of Jackass — all circulated without permission from their families.
Rightfully so, the trend has upset many people close to those depicted: Zelda Williams, daughter of comedy legend Robin Williams, urged followers to stop sending her videos of her late father, calling the AI-generated tributes “disrespectful” and “disturbing.” After animations of Martin Luther King Jr. making offensive remarks and perpetuating racial stereotypes, his daughter Bernice King publicly asked users to stop sharing them, prompting OpenAI to block all King-featured videos from the app while the company worked to “strengthen guardrails for historical figures.”
OpenAI later said that families and estates should have a say in how their loved ones’ likenesses are used, but critics argue that the company’s safeguards are still too weak to prevent people from turning the dead into digital caricatures.
Could Sora Replace TikTok?
More than one million users downloaded Sora within the first five days of its launch — outperforming ChatGPT’s explosive debut — and it is among the top five most popular apps on the Apple App Store. Still, it’s far too early to tell if the app has what it takes to be anything more than a novelty. While it can churn out endless streams of synthetic short-form videos, its automated approach lacks the human creativity, authenticity and cultural resonance that made TikTok a global phenomenon with nearly two billion users.
Big Tech’s push toward AI-powered social media — from Meta’s Vibes platform to Google’s Flow — suggests a broader race to capture user attention cheaply. But this may be out of touch with what users actually want with some critics deriding the content’s low entertainment value and claiming it is nothing more than “AI slop.”
For now, Sora is not likely to replace TikTok any time soon. Rather, it’s more likely to carve out a niche alongside it, as part of a new generation of AI-driven social media platforms.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to use Sora?
To use Sora, approved members (and their invitees) must log in with a code, completing a quick face scan on their way to finish setting up their account. Once inside the app, users can start creating high-fidelity animations from simple text prompts, with the option to immerse their likeness into the scene.
Is Sora free?
Yes, Sora is free. However, users can only access the app if they’ve been invited to do so by a friend and are given an access code.
Is Sora available?
Yes, Sora is available on an invite-only basis to users living in the United States and Canada.
