Sora vs TikTok vs Instagram Reels: How OpenAI's new social media app stacks against rivals

The image has been generated using Google Gemini AI

The launch of the Sora iOS app signals more than just another entry into short-form video. Yes, it borrows the familiar vertical-scroll layout of TikTok and Instagram Reels, but its foundation is different. Instead of user-shot clips, Sora leans on generative AI, flipping the focus from endless consumption to creation and control.

TikTok and Instagram Reels are still built on human-made videos. They thrive on dances, trending sounds, and challenges filmed on phones, supported by in-app filters and editing tools. Their cultural power comes from sharing snippets of real life—or at least curated versions of it.

Sora, meanwhile, is an AI-first platform. Every video is generated, not filmed, says OpenAI. Its standout feature, cameos, lets you record your likeness once and then drop yourself (or friends) into AI-generated scenes. That shifts the dynamic completely. Instead of showing your actual life, you’re sharing stylised, AI-powered moments—fictional but personal.

TikTok’s For You feed and Instagram’s Reels feed are infamous for pulling you into “just one more scroll.” They’re optimised for engagement, which critics say fuels addictive behaviour.

Sora, as per OpenAI, is trying to break that loop. Its “Feed Philosophy” is built on natural language–driven recommendations, and the company insists it is not optimising for screen-time. By default, your feed prioritises content from friends and clips that might inspire your own creations. The app also nudges you with wellbeing checks and lets you dial back what you see. For teens, there are hard limits on daily generations—an unusually explicit safeguard. On monetisation, too, Sora is diverging: no ads, no attention farming, just the option to pay if you want to generate extra videos when demand exceeds compute.

TikTok’s strength is its ability to make a random creator famous overnight. Reels, bolted onto Instagram, plays a similar game but within a more polished, image-driven network. Both lean on viral trends and a wide social graph.

Sora is deliberately narrower. It’s invite-only at launch, and cameos are designed for smaller groups of friends. The idea is to make AI creation playful and social rather than broadcast-driven, says OpenAI. Where TikTok is a stage, Sora could feel more like a collaborative workshop.

With cameos, Sora enters deepfake territory—so safety had to be baked in. Users keep full control over their likeness: you decide who can use it, and you can revoke or delete any cameo at will. Parental controls, powered by ChatGPT, let families cap usage, tweak algorithms, and even shut off DMs. TikTok and Reels rely mainly on moderation and reporting tools, but Sora’s safety net extends to consent and digital identity itself.

TikTok entertains, Reels extends Instagram, but Sora is trying something stranger and possibly more radical: making creation, not consumption, the point of the app. Whether that’s enough to pull people away from the infinite scroll is the big question.