Sora is the top app downloaded – but you still need an invite to get it (www.techradar.com)

OpenAI’s new Sora app — an invite-only AI video-maker coupled with a social feed for remixing and sharing clips — rocketed to the top of Apple’s U.S. App Store, logging ~164,000 installs in its first two days (56,000 on day one) and outpacing rivals including ChatGPT, Grok, Claude and Microsoft Copilot. The launch was paired with the Sora 2 video model and offers features like uploading personal footage to generate AI avatars, remixing clips on a feed, and producing TikTok-style content natively from the app rather than via a ChatGPT plugin. The surge highlights strong consumer demand for generative video and social-native AI experiences, and suggests Sora could become a strategic monetization channel for OpenAI. It also foregrounds technical and policy trade-offs: Sora ships with guardrails such as explicit permission for Cameos, watermarking, and banned prompt classes, yet OpenAI has already revised policies after users posted copyrighted characters, celebrity faces and risky stunts. The result is a fast-growing, invitation-gated product that accelerates synthetic media proliferation — raising questions about content quality, consent, IP and safety even as it signals a major new front in AI product adoption.