OpenAI Pauses Sora Sign-Ups Due To Surging Launch Day Demand

Eager to try OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video tool now that it’s launched to the public? Looks like you’re going to have to be patient.

At 10 a.m. PT on Monday, the San Francisco-based company made its video-generation product available to anyone with a paid ChatGPT Plus or Pro subscription, but later paused the ability to create new accounts, citing strong demand.

“We’re currently experiencing heavy traffic and have temporarily disabled Sora account creation,” a message on Sora.com reads. “If you’ve never logged into Sora before, please check back again soon.”

OpenAI declined to comment on how many people were able to create accounts on Monday or when the capability will resume, though users who did gain access are sharing their creations on social media.

What Is OpenAI’s Sora Video Tool?

Sora produces short, high-fidelity videos from written text prompts, and users can also input their own visual assets for remixing and blending. ​OpenAI first introduced Sora in February, but at the time only made it available to a select group of artists, designers and filmmakers, who shared the surreal results of their experimentation in March.

Now ChatGPT users anywhere can tinker with the new version called Sora Turbo — anywhere, that is, except in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the European Economic Area, which includes European Union members, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, which are not part of the EU but participate in the EU’s single market.

“Our holiday gift to you is here: Sora is here,” OpenAI wrote on X, alongside an image of a holiday ornament swirling in front of a tree. “We hope that this early version of Sora will help people explore new forms of creativity.”

Users of Sora Turbo can generate videos up to 1080p resolution, up to 20 seconds long, in wide-screen vertical or square aspect ratios. Sora’s main page displays sample videos from the photorealistic — a bustling urban street, a snowy landscape — to the surreal, such as a wide open mouth full of tiny flowers and a rocket blasting colorful streamers instead of flames as it ascends from a launch pad in a cartoonish sea.

To get imaginations flowing, Sora.com also gives some mind-bending examples of prompts and the videos that result: “Open large doors into a library. Replace doors with French doors. Turn the library into a spaceship. Remove the spaceship, add a jungle. Replace the jungle with a lunar view.”

Artists Who Leaked Sora Share Thoughts

Sora’s much-anticipated rollout comes less than two weeks after after a group of aggrieved artists who’d been granted early access to Sora leaked the tool. They did so to call attention to their position that OpenAI had exploited their unpaid or underpaid labor to “art wash” its image, diverting attention from artists’ concerns their work was being used to train AI datasets without credit or compensation. AI shut down Sora hours later.

“Artists are not your unpaid R&D,” the artists said in an open letter to the company. “We are not your free bug testers, PR puppets, training data, validation tokens.”

At the time of the leak by the group calling itself “PR Puppets,” an OpenAI spokesperson responded: “Hundreds of artists in our alpha have shaped Sora’s development, helping prioritize new features and safeguards. Participation is voluntary, with no obligation to provide feedback or use the tool.” This year, OpenAI hosted its first artist in residence, Alexander Reben, who turned Sora’s AI-generated imagery into 3D models that he then had transformed into marble sculptures.

The tense back and forth between OpenAI and some artists continues, however. On Monday, a number of those involved in the leak released a series of essays titled “Art in the Cage of Digital Reproduction” that further elaborate on their anger and discontent over the alleged behavior of ​​OpenAI and other “corporate AI overlords.”

“What is needed is a meaningful reinvestment of the wealth these companies generate which could benefit the biggest number of artists,” art director Federico Bomba wrote in an essay. “Not token microgrants or hollow gestures, but millions of dollars, euros, yen, or pesos poured directly into empowering the worldwide artistic community to experiment, innovate, and push boundaries. This is what people should expect from a company that claims to value artists’ skills and contributions.”

Now That Sora Is Out, Who Can Use It?

With Sora now officially out to the public, those who have a $20-per-month ChatGPT Plus account can generate up to 50 Sora videos per month at 480p resolution, or fewer videos at 720p resolution. The new ChatGPT Pro plan, which costs $200 monthly, allows for 10 times more Sora usage, plus higher-resolution videos with longer durations.

“We’re working on tailored pricing for different types of users, which we plan to make available early next year,” Open AI said in a blog post on Monday. “We’re introducing our video generation technology now to give society time to explore its possibilities and co-develop norms and safeguards that ensure it’s used responsibly as the field advances.”