"I am mystified by how rapidly Sora went from launch to shutdown"
I suspect they promised synthetic movies but it quickly became clear that they were never going to be able to deliver on this.
Slick fifteen second lulz-clips, sure, but I don't think they can make several of them consistent enough to fit into a larger video narrative without the audience finding it jarring and incoherent.
Perhaps legal at Disney also concluded that the output wouldn't be possible to copyright, which is their core business.
Every studio that made video content using AI video generation — think those all come commercials— basically just generated and regenerated the same few-second clips until they got an acceptable one. Hundreds and hundreds of times. I would be astonished if it would have been cheaper than actual CGI had the generation not been so heavily subsidized, and the product sucked.
I suspect they promised synthetic movies but it quickly became clear that they were never going to be able to deliver on this.
Slick fifteen second lulz-clips, sure, but I don't think they can make several of them consistent enough to fit into a larger video narrative without the audience finding it jarring and incoherent.
Perhaps legal at Disney also concluded that the output wouldn't be possible to copyright, which is their core business.