Multiple major outlets reported that OpenAI posted a public announcement in late March saying it was “saying goodbye” to the Sora app and discontinuing Sora in the consumer app and API. CBS News and the San Francisco Chronicle both described this as OpenAI “pulling the plug”/“shutting down” Sora, tying it to the company’s official messaging.
The key nuance is scope: the announcement targeted the standalone Sora app and API rather than necessarily retiring all underlying video-generation capabilities. Several reports noted the shutdown as a phaseout tied to rising compute demand and shifting product focus, meaning the consumer-facing Sora access ended, while the model could persist inside other OpenAI offerings.