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The company’s new social media app allows users to create short videos with audio from text prompts and insert themselves in AI-generated scenes

OpenAI is squaring up to TikTok, Google’s YouTube and Meta with a new social-media app for its AI video generator that allows users to create high-definition video clips with audio from text prompts.

Users can upload short clips of themselves and insert them into Sora-generated worlds, describing the idea, style and scene they want to see. They can also connect with other users, watch and comment on their content.

The new version, Sora 2, will feature a swipe-and-scroll navigation similar to platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, setting out OpenAI’s stall as Silicon Valley ramps up its focus on AI video generation. The company plans to initially release the app through Apple’s App Store in the U.S. and Canada on an invite-only basis.

OpenAI faces stiff competition from Google, which recently connected its Veo 3 AI video generator to its popular YouTube platform, allowing users to incorporate the technology in short-form videos. Social media and video-sharing apps are competing fiercely for user engagement.

Sora 2 will include a vertical feed and algorithm-driven recommendations that prioritize content users might connect with, the company said Tuesday. Sora was first released last December, allowing users to create high-definition video clips from text prompts.

Technology and social-media companies are betting that new AI features will increase engagement and the popularity of their apps and services. AI companies have taken an aggressive approach to how their fast-evolving tools use creative works both for training and in response to user prompts.

In an attempt to prevent doomscrolling, OpenAI said the app won’t allow users under the age of 18 to have the infinite scroll function by default and will nudge adult users toward creating content if it perceives they have been passively viewing for too long. Content will be marked as AI generated when it is moved off platform so that its provenance is clear.

The new version of Sora can create videos featuring copyright material unless copyright holders opt out of having their work appear, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. OpenAI began alerting talent agencies and studios about the forthcoming product and its opt-out process over the past week.

The opt-out process for the new version of Sora means that movie studios and other intellectual property owners would have to explicitly ask OpenAI not to include their copyright material in videos the tool creates. While copyright characters will require an opt-out, the new product won’t generate images of recognizable public figures without their permission, the Journal reported.

The Journal’s parent company, News Corp, has a content deal with OpenAI.

“I think they are certainly opening themselves up to lawsuits in particular cases,” said Mark Lemley, professor at Stanford Law School, who represented AI company Anthropic in its recent copyright case. Anthropic agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit over its use of pirated books to train large-language models.

The app joins a crowded field. TikTok’s AI Alive feature lets users turn pictures into videos with prompts and users can upload AI-generated content. Meta last week rolled out a new feed of short-form AI-created videos in its AI app.