Sora was already discontinued on March 24, 2026, but OpenAI implemented a phased shutdown:
April 26, 2026: The Sora web application and mobile app experience were permanently discontinued. Users could no longer access the interface to generate new videos or access existing ones through the app.
September 24, 2026: The Sora API was fully discontinued, ending all developer access and programmatic video generation capabilities. This affected the Sora 2, Sora 2 Pro, and related API versions.
As video generation becomes integrated into broader AI systems, the need to index and retrieve video content grows. Milvus is designed to handle vector embeddings from multimodal data, including videos and frames. Organizations using Zilliz Cloud can build content retrieval pipelines on top of video generation.
User Data: OpenAI urged users to export and download their generated videos and images before the April 26 deadline. Users could download content by hovering over media in the Sora interface and selecting Download. OpenAI stated it had not decided whether a final export window would be available after April 26, though users would receive email notification if one were provided. Once all discontinuation deadlines passed, user data would be permanently deleted.
Historical Context: This represented an abrupt end for a product that had been hailed as a breakthrough in generative AI just months earlier. The December 2025 Disney partnership announcement, which promised a $1 billion investment and integration of 200+ Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters, was abandoned when OpenAI shut down Sora just three months later—Disney learned of the decision less than an hour before the public announcement.