OpenAI's TikTok of AI slop hit one million downloads faster than ChatGPT (www.engadget.com)

OpenAI’s new app Sora — an invite-only, North America–limited social feed of AI-generated vertical videos — reached more than one million downloads in under five days, reportedly “even faster than ChatGPT.” The app uses OpenAI’s Sora 2 model to turn simple text prompts into short (~10-second) videos and offers a Cameo feature that can generate clips of consenting people. The product intentionally mimics TikTok’s endless-scroll format but replaces human-uploaded content with model-created video, signaling rapid consumer appetite for short-form generative video experiences. The launch exposed key technical and policy tensions: lax initial guardrails allowed deepfakes of public figures (including Sam Altman) and clear copyright infringement via recognizable characters, prompting industry pushback and questions about the model’s training data. OpenAI has since added user controls over personal likeness and says it will let rights holders specify permitted uses (including outright bans). It’s unclear why those controls weren’t in place at launch, and downloads don’t equal active users because of the invite system. The bigger implications for AI/ML include rapid product-market fit for generative video, urgent needs for provenance and rights-management tooling, and a monetization challenge—video generation is costly, so scaling sustainably will test both engineering and business models.