It makes total sense to me that this would happen. The economics around Sora and video generation in general are just not there right now, and if you're a company that's also doing research into these things, that's basically a bottomless pit for money. I think OpenAI ceding the space to Google and others for the moment is probably the smart move.
I had fun using Sora and I'm bummed to see it will get removed from the API as well later this year, but no biggie. Veo is plenty good.
It really must cost so much money to generate these videos. That they can generate 12 second videos that are high quality in such a short amount of time - that takes some serious horsepower.
If anything, Sora was an experimental question: giving away video generation is expensive, but is the voluntary user labeling and engagement data, which can be fed into RLHF, accretive enough to model training that it's a meaningful trade to make?
The shutdown of the service makes it clear that the answer was "no."
(It's not a particularly useful signal, though, in evaluating OpenAI's future. It could mean that OpenAI is less interested in video data, which might have implications on their AGI ambitions. It could equally mean that OpenAI has enough data that it's hit diminishing returns, or has found a cheaper source of labeling, or doesn't consider it meaningful one way or another. So there's a lot of thoughtpieces that the shutdown is a sign of weakness, but I don't think it's worth jumping to conclusions.)
They're just removing it from public access and selling it to big money instead. Think large advertising companies, government agencies, Coke-Cola, Hollywood, etc. The scary part is now that they've removed it publicly, it's going to be harder to keep a pulse on what is real and what is fake. We can't trust any video, audio or text content now.
It took off rapidly but that was hardly because of any hyping and almost entirely due to word of mouth and people actually liking the product, until the press picked up on it.
From what I remember they still had an invite process when they were getting popular and the demand clearly overwhelmed their servers several times, indicating a much bigger response than they expected. If anything I think OpenAI was downplaying the product at the time.
ChatGPT is one of the most hyped tech products ever. We’ve had nearly 4 years of hype. From claims of AGI to claims we need UBI because of the ways it will devastate the work force.
> It took off rapidly but that was hardly because of any hyping and almost entirely due to word of mouth and people actually liking the product, until the press picked up on it.
Not my experience. A whole lot of breathless mentions in media, LinkedIn, and especially top-down company emails. Far fewer cases of people actually liking/using it.
Those products aren’t typically described as having been “hyped” though — just successful or viral. Hyped has a sort of derogatory/schadenfreude subtext.
I'm not an expert, but I can't see how they truly go under in the way Enron or Theranos did. If they did hit massive financial trouble the issue wouldn't be that their technology was bad, it would just be that they didn't have enough runway to get to a point where they could make the tech profitable. Someone with deep pockets would step in an buy them up before they went to 0 under the belief that they could last long enough to make the math work. Microsoft has a huge vested interest in keeping them solvent since they own so much of it already. Amazon clearly wants in after this last round of funding. I also wouldn't be surprised if Musk tried to buy it given that xAI seems like a bit of a shit show and I can't think of a better way for him to assert dominance over Altman than to take a company that Altman almost bankrupted and make it successful.
Replace financial sector with big tech and overexposure to CDOs to overexposure to large promised data centers build outs and you have the right answer.
First thing that comes to mind is musk will be absolutely insufferable and childish about it. A lot of companies will be impacted but it’s not going to happen. They are cleaning up their messes to go public
The hype cycle for AI products is brutal. Going from "this will change everything" to silence in a few months is rough. Makes you wonder how many other AI products are riding the same wave right now without anyone noticing.
I doubt that comes into it. Ive wants to design what he wants to design, whether people like that universally or not is clearly not a concern to him. Everyone hated the MacBook keyboards for years, the lack of ports, the iPhone not getting USB-C until a decade late, whatever the Magic Mouse is, etc. Ive is just ungrounded from what people want, 20% of the time he knows better and changes the industry, 80% of the time it just annoys people.
Whatever happened to that one? I suspect they made the video and announcement for the PR and didn't actually have a plan. Then the Friend AI and Meta glasses thing came out and I suspect Sir Ive is having some serious second thoughts in putting his brand onto anything like that.
It seems no one wants a dedicated AI hardware product. Because the smartphone exists.
It makes total sense to me that this would happen. The economics around Sora and video generation in general are just not there right now, and if you're a company that's also doing research into these things, that's basically a bottomless pit for money. I think OpenAI ceding the space to Google and others for the moment is probably the smart move.
I had fun using Sora and I'm bummed to see it will get removed from the API as well later this year, but no biggie. Veo is plenty good.
It really must cost so much money to generate these videos. That they can generate 12 second videos that are high quality in such a short amount of time - that takes some serious horsepower.
If anything, Sora was an experimental question: giving away video generation is expensive, but is the voluntary user labeling and engagement data, which can be fed into RLHF, accretive enough to model training that it's a meaningful trade to make?
The shutdown of the service makes it clear that the answer was "no."
(It's not a particularly useful signal, though, in evaluating OpenAI's future. It could mean that OpenAI is less interested in video data, which might have implications on their AGI ambitions. It could equally mean that OpenAI has enough data that it's hit diminishing returns, or has found a cheaper source of labeling, or doesn't consider it meaningful one way or another. So there's a lot of thoughtpieces that the shutdown is a sign of weakness, but I don't think it's worth jumping to conclusions.)
They're just removing it from public access and selling it to big money instead. Think large advertising companies, government agencies, Coke-Cola, Hollywood, etc. The scary part is now that they've removed it publicly, it's going to be harder to keep a pulse on what is real and what is fake. We can't trust any video, audio or text content now.
Was ChatGPT hyped?
It took off rapidly but that was hardly because of any hyping and almost entirely due to word of mouth and people actually liking the product, until the press picked up on it.
From what I remember they still had an invite process when they were getting popular and the demand clearly overwhelmed their servers several times, indicating a much bigger response than they expected. If anything I think OpenAI was downplaying the product at the time.
ChatGPT is one of the most hyped tech products ever. We’ve had nearly 4 years of hype. From claims of AGI to claims we need UBI because of the ways it will devastate the work force.
> It took off rapidly but that was hardly because of any hyping and almost entirely due to word of mouth and people actually liking the product, until the press picked up on it.
Not my experience. A whole lot of breathless mentions in media, LinkedIn, and especially top-down company emails. Far fewer cases of people actually liking/using it.
It was claimed that ChatGPT was sentient and AGI lol
Some people lost their minds over the popular sentiment: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-...
Yes, that is what hype is. It was organic hype, and is frankly the only real way to do it otherwise you get backlash.
Those products aren’t typically described as having been “hyped” though — just successful or viral. Hyped has a sort of derogatory/schadenfreude subtext.
I thought "hype" was a different thing from "organic growth" but similar
More discussion:
Goodbye to Sora
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47508246
What is the fallout if OpenAI goes under?
I'm not an expert, but I can't see how they truly go under in the way Enron or Theranos did. If they did hit massive financial trouble the issue wouldn't be that their technology was bad, it would just be that they didn't have enough runway to get to a point where they could make the tech profitable. Someone with deep pockets would step in an buy them up before they went to 0 under the belief that they could last long enough to make the math work. Microsoft has a huge vested interest in keeping them solvent since they own so much of it already. Amazon clearly wants in after this last round of funding. I also wouldn't be surprised if Musk tried to buy it given that xAI seems like a bit of a shit show and I can't think of a better way for him to assert dominance over Altman than to take a company that Altman almost bankrupted and make it successful.
Eventually a new era of maturity and cost discipline.
A systemic risk to the financial sector due to their overexposure to CDOs? Yes, I know that's the same plot as 2008. The writers have gotten lazy.
Replace financial sector with big tech and overexposure to CDOs to overexposure to large promised data centers build outs and you have the right answer.
First thing that comes to mind is musk will be absolutely insufferable and childish about it. A lot of companies will be impacted but it’s not going to happen. They are cleaning up their messes to go public
Meanwhile, Sora and other video models have become available on Openrouter. Are we sure this is the end of Sora? Or just the interface?
They’re slowly deprecating and ending the Sora API over the next 6 months.
The hype cycle for AI products is brutal. Going from "this will change everything" to silence in a few months is rough. Makes you wonder how many other AI products are riding the same wave right now without anyone noticing.
The whole company appears to be a giant pile of burning cash at this point and I can only imagine that this wasn’t exactly helping that situation.
Was it fun while it lasted? Sorta, but it got old pretty quick.
Is this a business? Hell no.
Just wait until Sir Jony Ive's unapologetically AI hardware products that cost too much, do too little, and also flop.
One would have to think he’s having second thoughts. Attaching himself to a sinking ship would torpedo his legacy.
I doubt that comes into it. Ive wants to design what he wants to design, whether people like that universally or not is clearly not a concern to him. Everyone hated the MacBook keyboards for years, the lack of ports, the iPhone not getting USB-C until a decade late, whatever the Magic Mouse is, etc. Ive is just ungrounded from what people want, 20% of the time he knows better and changes the industry, 80% of the time it just annoys people.
Whatever happened to that one? I suspect they made the video and announcement for the PR and didn't actually have a plan. Then the Friend AI and Meta glasses thing came out and I suspect Sir Ive is having some serious second thoughts in putting his brand onto anything like that.
It seems no one wants a dedicated AI hardware product. Because the smartphone exists.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-sudden-fall-of-openais-most-...
A gift for us?! TY
Honestly given that they’re nowhere near profitable even with their main product this is the right move.
It's really disappointing news. I've been actively using Sora for my video production
Was it your first time doing video production? (or maybe you had done solo or larger projects before)
even more reason to cheer for the rest of us
Well then this is great news.