OpenAI says it has no plans to release an API for Sora, its AI model that can generate reasonably realistic videos when provided with a text description or reference image.
During an AMA with members of OpenAI’s dev team, Romain Huet, head of developer experience at OpenAI, said that a Sora API isn’t in the cards at the moment. “We don’t have plans for a Sora API yet,” he wrote.
The reason could be capacity issues. OpenAI was forced to close applications for its Sora-powered video creation and editing suite shortly after its launch due to heavier-than-anticipated traffic. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman apologized on X.
Sora, one prompt, cinematic AF pic.twitter.com/X8gzdes20M
— Alex Patrascu (@maxescu) December 14, 2024
“We significantly underestimated demand for Sora,” he wrote. “It’s going to take a while to get everyone access. Trying to figure out how to do it as fast as possible!”
OpenAI resumed sign-ups for Sora several days ago.
Choosing not to prioritize an API for Sora threatens to put OpenAI at a disadvantage compared to one of its chief rivals, Google, which launched an API in limited access for its video-generation model, Veo, in early December. Google said this week that Veo’s successor, Veo 2, which went viral for its impressively high-quality outputs, will get an API sometime in 2025.
AWS has an API for its recently launched Nova Reel video model. And a number of startups focused on generative video offer APIs for their models. One firm, Runway, claims that its API has been used by “the world’s largest consumer technology companies to reliably generate millions of videos for their users.”