No one loved Sora 2 as much as I did when it first came out, except maybe Sam Altman.
In the first few days, I spent so much time using it that my phone’s battery easily died by 5pm (Tim Cook: Let’s talk about that later.) And I was wasting a significant portion of my work time (To the Editor: Let’s do it) do not have (I’ll talk about that later) I’m making silly videos of myself and my friends.
But it’s been over six weeks since Sam Altman released Sora 2, and I’ve barely opened the app in recent weeks. My excitement and interest waned.
I have a few ideas as to why I’m bored.
What I first liked about Sora was the ability to create realistic videos of your friends (if you allow the use of your friend’s likeness, known as a “cameo” on the app), which can lead to some hilarious and fun inside jokes.
I made videos of my friends doing embarrassing things like singing in a ska band, tripping on roller skates, and various other inside jokes.
It’s just funny watching friends find themselves in impossible situations. For example, I still find very funny the video of my colleague Peter Kafka wearing a red jumpsuit and performing a song similar to “Thriller.”
Peter Kafka dances like Michael Jackson. Thank you, Sora2! Sora
On the other hand, it was clear that many people found it amusing to make videos of deceased celebrities saying and doing impossible things. Like Stephen Hawking standing on a skate ramp or Martin Luther King Jr. giving a meme speech instead of his “I have a dream” speech. This ultimately led to protests from the King family and OpenAI to “pause” its ability to use the civil rights leader’s image.
In general, I found these videos of celebrities much less interesting than the videos of my own friends. There’s no shortage of Abe Lincoln comedic imaginations in the world, but none of my friend Matt got diarrhea at a rodeo. Only Sora 2 can do this.
For me, the friend graph was key. my My friend was interesting. Everything else was just a slog. If you want to create or watch an ambient AI video that just “looks cool” (trembling) Meta vibes.
But the friendship never expanded beyond the first handful of early adopters, at least for me. None of my friends who don’t work in the tech or media industry have ever attended. No matter how much I try to explain Sora to them, they are horrified by the idea of having a stranger take a video of their face.
They’re not wrong about that. One of the less appealing aspects of Sora is that there is a lot of what I consider to be fetish content about me and other women on the app. (I recently saw an account featuring a cameo featuring just a woman in a tuxedo, and then someone comes along and rips a white boutonniere from her lapel. Even though I’ve been writing about internet culture for years, I’m grateful to be surprised by new niche fetishes.)
You can now access the Sora app without an invite code in the US, Canada, Japan, and South Korea.
Limited time only.
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) October 29, 2025
Recently, OpenAI announced that it would be eliminating the invitation code requirement that initially limited Sora. However, I haven’t heard anyone I know talk about registration lately. And most of my friends who were making videos at first stopped.
But just because I’m done with Sora for now, I don’t think that means this app is a failure or that others won’t find much use for it. High quality, easy to use, and above all, free AI video app. They could be using it for anything other than “sending a joke to a friend.”
The downside to OpenAI here is that it’s obviously costing the company a lot of money because we have people building things with OpenAI. Forbes does some simple math and estimates that all the computations to run Sora could cost OpenAI as much as $15 million per day. (OpenAI declined to comment for this story to Forbes and did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.)
We don’t know what Sora’s short-term or long-term future will be.
Ironically, Sora did “have fun with friends”! Meta AI vibes should (Vibes just launched a few days ago, but it’s still a bit of a wasteland).
Perhaps there is still a future for fun social apps that bring together more friends. Or maybe Sora will just become a paid pro tool. I don’t know!
But for now, I’m thankfully back to wasting time using my phone in a more traditional way.
