OpenAI Pulls Plug on Sora and Drops $1bn Disney Deal, Broadcasters Urge EU to Smart TV Platforms, AI Personalization and Streaming Market Surge
OpenAI pulls plug on Sora and drops $1bn Disney deal
OpenAI is to shut down its video-generation tool Sora less than two years after its high-profile launch, as the company pivots towards robotics and more advanced forms of artificial intelligence. The San Francisco-based firm has also abandoned a reported $1bn content partnership with Disney, marking a significant retreat from its ambitions in AI-generated video.
Sora drew widespread attention on its release for its ability to create realistic video clips from simple text prompts, fuelling debate across the creative industries about the future of filmmaking and intellectual property. However, OpenAI said on Wednesday that it had decided to discontinue the product to focus on technologies that will help people solve real-world, physical tasks. The move signals a broader strategic shift towards agentic AI systems capable of carrying out complex actions with minimal human input, as well as robotics applications trained using similar techniques developed for video generation.
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A spokesperson for Disney said the company “respects OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere”, adding that it would continue to explore partnerships with other AI providers, with an emphasis on respecting intellectual property rights. OpenAI confirmed that both the consumer-facing Sora app and its professional web-based platform would be shut down and indicated it would no longer prioritise the development of video-generation tools, although image-generation features within ChatGPT will remain unaffected.
Film and Entertainment Market Set for $173B Valuation as AI Personalization and Streaming Surge
The global film and entertainment market is forecast to reach $173.39bn by 2030, as streaming continues to dominate distribution and consumption. Growth is being fueled by advances in AI-driven recommendation engines, wider rollout of 5G and high-speed internet, and rising demand for immersive formats including AR, VR, and XR. At the same time, studios and platforms are increasing investment in regional and local-language content to drive subscriber growth in international markets, even as the industry contends with subscription fatigue and ongoing pressure on pricing models.
Emerging film and entertainment trends are centered on personalization, short-form viewing, and more interactive storytelling formats, as companies look to deepen engagement and extend time spent on the platform. Technology providers are also scaling up cloud-based streaming and playout SaaS solutions to improve operational efficiency and distribution. In September 2024, US-based video SaaS firm Frequency launched Fusion, a platform designed to unify channel creation, scheduling, and distribution across more than 200 endpoints, including FAST and OTT services. By integrating traditional broadcast workflows with cloud infrastructure and automation, the platform can cut scheduling time by up to 95%, reflecting growing demand for speed and flexibility in content delivery.
Broadcasters Urge EU to Regulate Google, Apple, Amazon, and Samsung Smart TV Platforms
Major broadcasters, including Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, and NBCUniversal, are escalating their fight with Big Tech over control of the smart TV ecosystem, urging European regulators to impose stricter rules on platforms operated by Google, Amazon, Apple, and Samsung. In a letter sent Monday to EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera, the Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe (ACT), whose members also include Paramount+, ITV, Sky, Canal+, RTL, Mediaset and TF1, called for several leading smart TV operating systems and voice platforms to be designated as “gatekeepers” under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). The group cited data from a 2025 market study showing Android TV increasing its share from 16% to 23% between 2019 and 2024, Amazon’s Fire OS rising from 5% to 12%, and Samsung’s Tizen holding a 24% share. Broadcasters said the scale of these platforms gives tech companies significant control over content distribution and discovery on connected TVs.
The Digital Markets Act, which came into force in 2023, sets out obligations aimed at limiting the power of large technology companies and increasing competition.
Val Kilmer to Return via AI in ‘As Deep As the Grave’
With Estate’s Backing, Val Kilmer is set to return to the screen via AI in the upcoming drama As Deep As the Grave, with the late actor’s estate supporting the project. Kilmer, who died last year at 65, had originally been attached to the film before his death from throat cancer and will now portray Father Fintan, a Native American spiritualist and Catholic priest, using generative AI technology. Writer-director Coerte Voorhees said the role was conceived specifically for Kilmer, citing the actor’s long-standing advocacy for Native American rights and his claimed Cherokee heritage, adding that “he was the actor I wanted to play this role.” The production is working closely with Kilmer’s estate, including his daughter Mercedes and son Jack, both of whom have endorsed the use of AI to complete the performance, marking the latest example of Hollywood exploring digital tools to extend the presence of major stars beyond their lifetimes.
Gig Workers Sell Life Moments to Train AI Models
Gig AI trainers around the world are cashing in by selling personal calls, texts, photos, and videos to AI companies desperate for fresh training data, as major web sources like C4, RefinedWeb, and Dolma restrict access to their content. Platforms such as Kled AI, Silencio, Neon Mobile, and Y Combinator-backed Luel AI are leading the charge, with trainers earning around $0.15 per minute for multilingual conversations or $0.02 per minute to clone their voices via ElevenLabs. The rush comes as researchers warn AI firms could exhaust high-quality human-generated text by 2026, pushing labs away from risky web scraping, which invites copyright lawsuits, and synthetic data that risks model collapse into error-prone output.
King’s College London economist Bouke Klein Teeselink called gig AI training an emerging work category set to explode, while AI researcher Veniamin Veselovsky noted human data remains the “gold standard” for improving model behaviors. From Cape Town to Chicago, thousands are now micro-licensing their biometric identities on these data marketplaces to fuel the next wave of systems like ChatGPT and Gemini.
U.S. Supreme Court rejects AI authorship claim in copyright case
The US Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge seeking to recognise artificial intelligence as the author of a copyrighted artwork, leaving in place rulings that copyright law applies only to human creators. The case was brought by computer scientist Stephen Thaler, who attempted to register an image generated by his AI system, the “Creativity Machine”, with the US Copyright Office, listing the machine as the sole author and himself as the owner. The application was rejected on the basis that the work lacked human authorship, a position later upheld by a federal judge and an appeals court, which found that works created entirely by AI fall outside the scope of existing copyright law. By declining to take up the case, the Supreme Court leaves that interpretation intact, as questions continue to grow over how intellectual property rules should apply to AI-generated content.
