From Sam Altman's blog post about Sora 2:
Optimize for long-term user satisfaction. The majority of users, looking back on the past 6 months, should feel that their life is better for using Sora that [sic] it would have been if they hadn’t. If that’s not the case, we will make significant changes (and if we can’t fix it, we would discontinue offering the service).
By September 30, 2027, will OpenAI make significant changes or discontinue Sora, citing concerns about long-term user satisfaction?
Any "significant change" should be something that a reasonable person might expect to improve long-term user satisfaction by a noticeable amount. It should be in reaction to something negative, so a new feature that makes the app "even better" wouldn't count. The change should be oriented around long-term satisfaction specifically, in the sense that Sora users are "short-term satisfied" while using the app but this is misaligned with their long-term desires, and the change attempts to fix that problem, so something like improved safety filters wouldn't count. Discontinuing Sora counts as a significant change.
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@Adam1 very good point thank you for saving me a lot of mana. For other people, based on my research on what Altman said it came down to
- The company said it needed to make trade-offs on products that have high compute costs (https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/24/tech/openai-sora-video-app-shutting-down)
- At the staff meeting where the shutdown was announced, Sam Altman told employees that OpenAI would refocus on productivity tools for enterprise customers and individual power users (https://www.humai.blog/sora-was-shut-down-a-day-after-publishing-its-safety-standards-what-really-happened-at-openai/)
- OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar framed the decision as a resource problem, telling CNBC they were facing a lack of compute and having to make difficult decisions (https://www.wired.com/story/openai-shuts-down-sora-ipo-ai-superapp/)
The question specifically requires OpenAI to cite the "long-term user satisfaction" framework from Altman's blog. imo the actual reasons at least how they portray it rn is that it was business-strategic ie declining downloads, unsustainable compute costs, a pivot to enterprise tools, and the collapse of the Disney partnership.
idt the problem wasn't that users were enjoying Sora but it was bad for them. This article said that the app peaked in November with about 3.3 million downloads and declined to about 1.1 million by February (https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/24/openais-sora-was-the-creepiest-app-on-your-phone-now-its-shutting-down/) so there just wasn't enough traction?
So like tldr, NO for both because:
1. Doesn't meet citing requirement. OpenAI's stated reasons were compute costs, strategic refocus toward enterprise, and resource constraints. They didn't invoke the long-term satisfaction framework at all.
2. The dynamic that altman was tlaking about in the blog doesn't match. ie users are short-term satisfied (enjoying scrolling, creating videos) but this is misaligned with their long-term desires (like a social media addiction problem). The problem is that "people stopped using Sora."
now its possible that openai could reframe this decision in the future retroactively, but i kinda doubt that will happen.
@prismatic I think I agree and oofed it, didn't realise the market was so strongly conditioned on needing the long term user satisfaction reasonings but this is just a skill issue on my part
@prismatic Your interpretation makes sense to me. Technically they could bring back Sora someday and then make a change to improve long-term satisfaction, but that seems unlikely, so I will resolve NO now to get people their mana back
@prismatic Ouch I missed the long term satisfaction clause
That was very fascinating
Thanks for a cool read on the explanation!