Sora hit 1M downloads faster than ChatGPT (techcrunch.com)

OpenAI’s new video-generating app Sora raced to the top of the U.S. App Store and, according to Appfigures, logged about 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days—slightly ahead of ChatGPT’s 606,000 iOS installs during its debut week. OpenAI’s head of Sora, Bill Peebles, later said the app hit 1 million downloads across platforms in under five days, notable because Sora remains invite-only and launched in the U.S. and Canada (Canada accounted for roughly 45,000 installs). Daily iOS installs peaked at about 107,800 on Oct. 1 and have hovered between ~84k–98k since, putting Sora’s rollout ahead of other recent AI app launches like Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot. For the AI/ML community this signals strong consumer demand and viral distribution for generative video—especially for a product in limited release. Sora runs the Sora 2 video model and produces highly realistic outputs, including deepfakes, which has already provoked ethical pushback (e.g., requests to stop generating images of deceased celebrities). The launch underscores technical progress in video synthesis and raises urgent safety, moderation and policy questions about misuse, provenance and consent. It also tightens competition among multimodal AI offerings, suggesting rapid user adoption will increasingly hinge on model quality, content controls, and responsible deployment.