OpenAI has been promising to release its next-gen video generator model, Sora, since February. On Monday, the company finally dropped a working version of it as part of its “12 Days of OpenAI” event.
“This is a critical part of our AGI roadmap,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during the company’s live stream.
According to the OpenAI team, Sora will be made available to Plus and Pro subscribers in the U.S. and around the world starting Monday afternoon.
YouTuber Marquis Brownlee reportedly got early access to the video generator and released a brief review on his channel on Monday morning. Sora appears to not be built atop GPT-4, as virtually all of OpenAI’s other generative tools are. The model is not available through the standard ChatGPT website, but instead through Sora.com (which is still not live as of this post’s publication).
The model is capable of generating videos in resolutions ranging from 480p to 1080p in lengths from 5 to 20 seconds, from either text prompts or reference images. It’s also capable of editing and extending existing video clips. ChatGPT Plus subscribers will be allowed up to 50 clip generations at up to 720p per month, and fewer videos at higher resolutions, each five seconds long. Pro users will be allowed unlimited generations at all resolutions and durations as long as 20 seconds. In addition to editing tools, Sora also offers a “storyboard” feature that will enable creators to combine multiple prompts into a single cinematic scene.
Brownlee notes that the model needs “a few minutes” to generate a 1080p clip, but notes “that’s also, like, right now, when almost no one else is using it. I kind of wonder how much longer it’ll take when this is just open for anyone to use.” Brownlee also points out that the model has significant difficulty in properly generating legs and their movements, with the front and rear legs swapping positions in unnatural and incomprehensible ways.
Our holiday gift to you: Sora is here. https://t.co/JQKGgLAy6E pic.twitter.com/0c0DLl6Udf
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) December 9, 2024
Unlike Grok 2, Sora will limit what its users can create and explicitly bars the generation of copyrighted subjects, people under the age of 18, and anything containing violence or “explicit themes.”
Despite OpenAI’s leading position in the AI industry, Sora has been beset by delays throughout its development, enabling competitors like Runway’s Gen-3 alpha, Kuaishou Technology’s Kling and Meta’s Movie Gen models to beat it to market. Sora was also recently (however briefly) publicly leaked by a group of beta testers, who accused the company of “art washing” the model’s capabilities.
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.
Nearly a month after announcing the GPT-6.1 Sol model, OpenAI unveiled GPT-6.1 Terra today. The latest addition to the family focuses on computer use, visual reasoning, coding, and professional work, while costing 50% less through the API than GPT-5.6 Terra.
OpenAI says Terra can handle everything from filling out browser forms and working inside spreadsheets to interpreting technical drawings and editing videos. The company says it can also complete computer-based tasks more than three times faster than GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol.