OpenAI's sudden discontinuation of its video model #Sora, just a few months after a spectacular deal with Disney, shows just how little these AI companies care about their so-called products. AI video apps, to quote @hito Steyerl, are «onboarding tools» — their purpose is more ideological than commercial.

Rather than offering revenue-generating services (OpenAI is burning money with every single Sora generated clip), these apps are designed to accustom us to a world in which so-called generative AI seems inevitable — and to provide investors with impressive demonstrations of these models' performance.

In other words, companies like OpenAI do not develop consumer products; they merely launch demos that can be retracted once they have fulfilled their purpose. Never mind that, in the meantime, they are flooding our media landscape with a deluge of #slop and destroying entire cultural sectors in the process.