OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has outlined the first major updates coming to Sora, the company’s new social app powered by generative video, saying the pace of change will be rapid and experimental—much like the early days of ChatGPT.
In a note to users and rightsholders, Altman admitted Sora is already testing the limits of what the company anticipated. “People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences,” he said, adding that the company now has to figure out how to monetise video generation without throttling creativity.
The first change will give rightsholders greater control over how their characters are used. Building on OpenAI’s opt-in model for likenesses, Sora will soon let creators decide the conditions under which their characters can appear—or block them entirely. Altman noted strong enthusiasm from rightsholders in Japan, where anime and gaming IPs dominate fan-driven creativity. Still, he admitted there will be “edge cases” where unauthorised content slips through, and said the system will need ongoing iteration.
The second change focuses on money. OpenAI plans to share revenue with rightsholders when their characters are used in videos, with the details of the model still under development. Altman suggested that the long-term goal is not just revenue but a new kind of “interactive fan fiction” that delivers value to both audiences and creators.
“We plan to do our iteration on different approaches in Sora, but then apply it consistently across our products,” Altman said, signalling that the lessons from Sora could ripple across OpenAI’s wider ecosystem.
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