OpenAI plans to bring Sora’s video generator to ChatGPT

OpenAI intends to eventually integrate its AI video generation tool, Sora, directly into its popular consumer chatbot app, ChatGPT, company leaders said during a Friday office hours session on Discord.

Today, Sora is only available through a dedicated web app OpenAI launched in December, which lets users access the AI video model of the same name to generate up to 20-second-long cinematic clips. However, OpenAI’s product lead for Sora, Rohan Sahai, said the company has plans to put Sora in more places, and expand what Sora can create.

OpenAI initially marketed Sora to creatives and video production studios in the months leading up to its December launch. Now, the company is making a more concerted effort to broaden the appeal of its AI video creation tool.

Sahai said OpenAI is actively working on a way to make Sora accessible within ChatGPT, marrying the two products, though he declined to offer a timeline. The version of Sora that ultimately comes to ChatGPT may not offer the same level of control compared to Sora’s web app, Sahai indicated, where users can edit and stitch footage together.

OpenAI may be trying to attract users to ChatGPT by letting them generate Sora videos from the chatbot. Putting Sora in ChatGPT could also incentivize users to upgrade to ChatGPT’s premium subscription tiers, which may offer higher video generation limits.

One of the reasons OpenAI launched Sora as a separate web app was to maintain ChatGPT’s simplicity, Sahai explained during the office hours.

Since its launch, OpenAI has expanded Sora’s web experience, creating more ways for users to browse Sora-generated videos from the community. Sahai also said OpenAI “would love to build” a standalone mobile app for Sora, noting that the Sora team is actively looking for mobile engineers.

OpenAI aims to expand Sora’s generation capabilities to images, as well.

OpenAI is working on an AI image generator powered by Sora, Sahai said, confirming rumors of such a project. While ChatGPT already supports image generation, powered by OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 model, a Sora-powered image generator could potentially let users create photos that are more photorealistic.

Sahai added that OpenAI is also working on a new version of Sora Turbo, the model that currently powers the Sora web app.