alt Hacker NewsSometimes I think my opinion means nothing on these topics, especially when it's going to get buried in a thread of 500 plus comments. But I think you finally see a little bit of a flaw in the strategy or just a little bit of insight into what was desperation for relevance and to try to very quickly attain what other companies have attained but essentially what they're seeing is this gradual reduction in ambition and it's only natural for a lot of companies to overreach, but essentially reality and gravity are pulling them back. And as some other people have mentioned wall Street and others see that coding is the prime use case for this where you can make money and have a really profitable business and there are auxiliary functions. Driving addictive content is not really one that should be at the forefront and while many will continue to do that and we'll have all this generative content, I think consumers are slightly smarter now that they don't want to be drawn into this kind of addictive toxic content.
Over time we're probably going to see some really broad and strong use cases of AI, but I think in the case of social media or generative content, we have to be a lot more thoughtful about it. And I'm glad that they're shutting down this app as much as it's great to see innovation and technology and to see how far it's pushed. I prefer to see it when someone like Google does it? Because they're really doing it from the standpoint of this has broad applicable applications to something like simulation or training. Not whatever open AI was doing which honestly just doesn't feel very truthful. I feel like they say one thing and do something else or they say one thing and the agenda or something else. And again, I don't know how helpful it is to comment like this, but I feel like if you understand the truth then you should speak the truth even if it only benefits one other person to hear it.
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> where you can make money and have a really profitable business
I am not convinced. Nobody is making money, every player is losing money hand over fist.
>I think consumers are slightly smarter now that they don't want to be drawn into this kind of addictive toxic content.
They're not, they just already have the habit formed with the place they go to do that. Ultimately anything worth seeing on sora will be reposted to Tiktok.
We could argue all day about what should be at the forefront, but addictive content isn't going anywhere, because addicts pay up.
In this case, maybe not enough to offset the costs; or maybe it just wasn't addictive enough. But it's still early days.
I also prefer seeing a corporation like Google do it for two reasons: generative content might feed their cash cow also known as “YouTube” and Google already has a good base for coding assistants. Google owns, I think, 25% of Anthropic and earns money selling compute infrastructure to Anthropic. Personally I think Antigravity (with Claude and Gemini) and gemini-cli firmly keeps Google in the running as far as AI coding tools goes. I want to do business with companies that have a sustainable business plan. Google’s AI products for tech work, and ProtonMail’s Lumo+ product for all private daily web search and chatbot functionality is enough for me; I used to chase every commercial AI offering but not anymore.
For OpenAI that was and felt like some side husle they were playing around nothing more.
Having Disney on their side was def quite a smart/interesting move.
At least from one interview, they def had resource issues last year and teams had to fight for it. Can easily be that sora was always priortized down and they realized it doesn't make sense to spend that much capacity while then not being able to push their main model.
> I think consumers are slightly smarter now that they don't want to be drawn into this kind of addictive toxic content.
Considering the large million plus view counts I see AI slop getting on FB and YouTube I'm not seeing this behaviour play out.
> I feel like they say one thing and do something else or they say one thing and the agenda or something else.
[...] do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's
shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their
fingers.
But all their works they do for to be seen of men [...]
[...] they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
Nothing is new under the sun.
> I think consumers are slightly smarter now that they don't want to be drawn into this kind of addictive toxic content.
The addictive toxic content will go the way of tobacco and explore new markets.
Back in 2010 around 11% of the population of Indonesia was connected to the internet. Currently it's closer to 80% - largely via mobile phones. That's approximately 200mln new users.
Nigeria and Pakistan are going through the same change, just started later.
Since 2016 India alone added more users than the mentioned countries combined.
That's a lot of first generation users. More than the entire western population.