In early October 2025, Sora, the AI video generator from ChatGPT company OpenAI, soared to the top of the app charts. While Sora has been around for a while, its recent surge in popularity is largely due to the fact that its newest version, Sora 2, boasts powerful and mesmerizing capabilities. In short, Sora has gone viral because users are able to generate incredible videos using just a prompt.
We have, however, been here before. Earlier in the year, Gemini’s video generator was wowing users, and OpenAI also had success with its image generator, which led to those viral tech crazes of Studio Ghibli-style images and people turning themselves into action figures. People obviously still use those image generators, but the virality was not sustained. Could Sora be different?
OpenAI aims for a TikTok-style experience
Well, one of the important differentiators is that OpenAI is not simply releasing Sora as a simple model on its own – the app is designed to be a social media experience with TikTok-style feeds. All content will be generated by Sora, so you won’t be able to upload your own videos, photos, or anything like that. The key, then, is that the underlying video generator maintains people’s interests.
Right now, we can only speculate about Sora’s longevity. You need to get almost philosophical about what makes a platform popular. We can look at other examples – the creativity on show on TikTok, gaming content on Twitch, games of chance on social casino sites, the political debates on X – that keep users entertained on various platforms for the long term, and Sora will need to tap into something that keeps users engaged months and years from now. It’s not always easy to predict what that is.
The central feature of Sora is termed Cameos, and it’s basically a prompt feature that allows you to insert yourself or a famous person into any given situation. So, for instance, you might say “generate a video of me scoring the winning touchdown for the New York Giants at the Super Bowl” or “create a video of someone who looks like Taylor Swift serving food in a McDonald’s while dressed as Wonder Woman” – you get the idea. Sora will create a ridiculously accurate video of that request.
Now, you may see a slight issue with the examples above – copyright. Several of the items in the prompts above are trademarked, and there has already been a backlash against OpenAI, including the threat of lawsuits, after a flood of videos containing copyrighted characters like Pikachu, SpongeBob, and others appeared on the app during its first few days of launch. Previously, OpenAI had said that it would require holders of certain intellectual property to opt out if they did not want their concepts to be used on the platform, whereas now OpenAI is offering more control, promising to work with stakeholders to block content.
Copyright lawyers are circling
The outcome of this battle is perhaps key to the longevity of Sora. An app where you can ask AI to generate a video “of me and my friends in Ghostbusters uniforms zapping some spooks” sounds fun, but if Ghostbusters IP holders don’t want their copyrighted materials used, it becomes a little less appealing to create a “generic ghost hunting video.”
The app is in its infancy, so we don’t know what new elements OpenAI will introduce, nor if it will come up with a deal to appease copyright holders. Of course, it is also not alone in this quest to blend AI with social media content, as Meta has also been pushing its Meta AI platform, although with much less fanfare. Some of the signs for OpenAI have been positive, but there may be fundamental questions over whether removing the “human” side of social media will impact Sora’s longevity, at least in the sense of a rival to TikTok.
