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Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company<\/i>\u2019s Plugged In<\/i>. Before we get underway, a little self-promotion: Apple\u2019s 50th anniversary is on April 1. As the big day approached, I realized that many people present at the company\u2019s creation were still very much with us. So I interviewed 23 of them for an oral history, \u201cHow Apple Became Apple: The Definitive Oral History of its Earliest Years.\u201d It\u2019s chock-full of great tales as told by everyone from cofounder Steve Wozniak to Liza Loop, the first Apple user. Hearing these pioneers reminisce, I felt like I had been there, too\u2014and so will you, I think. Here\u2019s the article.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When OpenAI launched its Sora app last September, the video-centric social network arrived on a tide of buzzy goodwill<\/a>. Its feed of 10-second video clips had a TikTok-esque vibe\u2014except that it was filled with AI-generated stuff instead of anything remotely real. In less than a minute, Sora users could create digital doppelg\u00e4ngers of themselves that were eerily convincing for use in their own clips and, optionally, those created by others. The result was playful, goofy fun, and far more intriguing than Meta\u2019s theoretically similar but painfully bland Vibes<\/a>.<\/p>\n But if Sora ends up being remembered for anything, it won\u2019t be for existing. Instead, it will have made its mark by going away.<\/p>\n On March 25, OpenAI announced that it was killing the app, along with the Sora API that let developers generate their own videos using the company\u2019s technology. The decision appeared hasty: OpenAI still hasn\u2019t shared details on when, exactly, Sora will cease to exist, or how users can download their videos for preservation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Most of the insta-reaction I\u2019ve seen to Sora\u2019s demise amounts to grave tap-dancing<\/a> of one sort or another. People are helpfully explaining that the app was a stupid idea<\/a> from the start, or assailing it as a slop machine<\/a> that deserved its fate. But I\u2019m not ashamed to admit that I will miss it. For reasons I wrote about shortly after its debut, escaping to Sora\u2019s weird little world always brightened my day.<\/p>\n For one thing, I found the app to be a genuine canvas for creativity, albeit in brief, inherently inconsequential bursts. My feed was full of fake commercials, fabricated vintage news clips, and other snippets of fantasy content that were like glimpses of bizarre alternate realities. An oddball crew of deceased celebrities\u2014Larry King, Richard Nixon, Queen Elizabeth II\u2014often starred in them, sometimes in uncannily convincing form and sometimes as vague approximations. On an internet that can feel unrelentingly grim, Sora\u2019s essential absurdity made me laugh.<\/p>\n Counterintuitively, I also found comfort in the fact that the app was all AI, all the time. Conventional social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok is now befouled by true AI slop, generated solely to try and attract eyeballs without working very hard. Being exposed to it always feels like an imposition. On Sora, however, I never had to wonder if something was real or not. It wasn\u2019t, and that was the point.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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