Sora controversies
Controversies tied to this brand in public sources. A listing is not a finding of fault.
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2025
Copyrighted-character generation in Sora 2
Sora 2 generated videos involving recognizable copyrighted characters and properties. Rights holders and industry representatives criticized the default treatment of protected material and called for stronger opt-out and authorization controls.
2025
Deepfake likenesses and deceased celebrities
Families and estates associated with deceased celebrities objected to hurtful or unauthorized synthetic videos depicting their relatives. The controversy led OpenAI to restrict some figures and provide additional mechanisms for estates to request protections.
2025
Watermark circumvention
Third-party programs reportedly emerged soon after the Sora 2 release that could remove or obscure visible moving watermarks, raising concerns about provenance, attribution, and the misuse of generated videos.
2025
Creative-industry employment concerns
Film professionals, performers, writers, artists, and labor organizations warned that high-quality AI video could reduce demand for human production work. Other commentators argued that the technology could lower barriers to entry and expand participation in visual storytelling.
2024
Tester access-key leak and artist protest
A group of testers publicly disclosed an access key and criticized OpenAI’s use of artist participation in Sora’s development. OpenAI revoked the compromised access and defended the testing program as voluntary.
2024
Training-data and copyright controversy
OpenAI said Sora was trained using publicly available videos and copyrighted videos licensed for training, but did not publish a complete account of the data sources. The lack of detailed disclosure contributed to wider disputes over consent, compensation, and the use of creative works in generative-AI training.