Ben Thompson argues that ChatGPT succeeded because the creator was also the consumer, receiving immediate, personalized value. In contrast, AI video is created for an audience. He questions whether Sora's easily-made content is compelling enough for anyone other than the creator to watch, posing a major consumption hurdle.
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The backlash to Meta's AI video feed "Vibes" stemmed from its impersonal, generic content. This contrasts with ChatGPT's viral "Studio Ghibli" filter, which succeeded by letting users apply an AI aesthetic to their own photos. Successful consumer AI must empower self-expression, not just serve curated assets.
The obvious social play for OpenAI is to embed collaborative features within ChatGPT, leveraging its utility. Instead, the company launched Sora, a separate entertainment app. This focus on niche content creation over core product utility is a questionable strategy for building a lasting social network.
OpenAI frames the current Sora model as analogous to GPT-3.5: a promising but flawed early version. This signals they know how to build the 'GPT-4 equivalent' for video and expect the pace of improvement to be even faster than it was for large language models.
AI video tools like Sora optimize for high production value, but popular internet content often succeeds due to its message and authenticity, not its polish. The assumption that better visuals create better engagement is a risky product bet, as it iterates on an axis that users may not value.
By releasing Sora as an API for developers and businesses rather than a standalone consumer app, OpenAI reveals its core strategy. The goal is to empower enterprise use cases like ad generation, not to build a new video destination to compete with platforms like YouTube or TikTok.
By allowing any developer to integrate its best video model via API, OpenAI is likely signaling it doesn't believe it can build a dominant, self-contained social video platform. A company aiming to create a new TikTok would maintain exclusivity over its core technology to maximize its competitive advantage.
Unlike traditional social media's 1% creator rule, OpenAI's Sora sees 70% of its users actively creating content. This makes the platform a "lean-forward" experience, more akin to an immersive video game than a passive "lean-back" feed like Instagram.
The hosts' visceral reactions to Sora—describing it as making their "skin crawl" and feeling "unsafe"—suggest the Uncanny Valley is a psychological hurdle. Overcoming this negative, almost primal response to AI-generated humans may be a bigger challenge for adoption than achieving perfect photorealism.
Meta and OpenAI's same-day launches reveal a strategic split. Meta’s generic AI video feed, "Vibes," was poorly received as "slop." In contrast, OpenAI’s "Pulse" offers personalized, high-utility content, showcasing a superior strategy of personal intelligence over mass-market AI entertainment.
Analyst Ben Thompson posits that Meta's passive, dream-like Vibes app is a better strategy for mass consumption than Sora's meme-focused, creator-centric tool, which he finds tiring. The key is serving the 90% of consumers, not just the 1% of creators or 9% of editors.