OpenAI’s Sora App Skyrockets to No.1 on App Store Charts

This week, the excitement surrounding OpenAI’s new AI social media app is still going strong as Sora which was recently introduced is the winner of the Apple App Store popularity contest.

Despite initially being invite-only and exclusively available to users in the United States and Canada, OpenAI’s Sora app for AI videos has become a viral sensation. 

On Friday, Sora topped the list of the best free apps, surpassing both Google Gemini (No. 2) and its sister program ChatGPT (No. 3). This places it ahead of ChatGPT from OpenAI and Google Gemini. 

With the No. 3 Top Overall app on Apple’s U.S on App Store, Sora received 56,000 downloads on its first day, according to new data from app intelligence company Appfigures. It rose to the top of the U.S. App Store’s app rankings on Friday, October 3.

A new software called Sora is named after the video generator developed by OpenAI. Similar to TikTok, it features an infinite stream of looping videos in various streams. However, there is a significant difference between Sora and other social networking platforms: Nothing on Sora is authentic. Sora 2, the company’s most recent AI video model, is used to create each video.

According to the company, over the first two days of its release on September 30 and October 1, Sora’s iOS app received 164,000 installs overall.

This first-day performance also places Sora’s debut on pace with xAI’s Grok launch and ahead of other significant AI software releases, such as Microsoft’s Copilot and Anthropic’s Claude. Google’s Gemini iOS app and OpenAI’s ChatGPT had a little more successful debuts, each achieving at least 80,000 downloads on the first day.

As Sora is currently invite-only, the  team will acknowledge that this comparison might not be the most accurate. If the new video app had been available to everyone, it might have garnered even more installs.

Even with this limitation, the latest version has a pretty good showing, demonstrating the desire for AI video solutions that provide users a more social networking-like experience. To the dismay of some OpenAI employees, the organisation should concentrate on tackling more difficult issues that advance humankind. But who’s to say that deepfakes of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s question, “Are my piggies enjoying their slop?” aren’t helping humanity?

Appfigures had to conduct an analysis that just examined the downloads of the other AI applications in the United States and Canada in order to compare Sora’s early success to those of other AI apps. This is due to the fact that the many AI applications available on the market have adopted distinct launch tactics. For example, Grok restricted its iOS-only release to the U.S., Australia, and India, whereas ChatGPT first launched on iOS and was only available to U.S. users at the time. When Anthropic originally released its Claude app on iOS last year, it did not specify any geographical limitations.

Appfigures calculated the numbers to only consider the downloads of each app in the United States and Canada, assuming the app had been available there at launch, in order to provide a more comparable analysis.

Only iOS users in the US and Canada can download the app; Android users are forced to utilise Sora’s website instead. But without an invite code, you won’t be able to begin scrolling even if you are able to download the iOS app. You’ll need to either put yourself on the waitlist or get a code from a friend.

With 81,000 and 80,000 day-one iOS downloads, respectively, ChatGPT and Gemini had bigger launches than Sora. Also with 56,000 installs on the first day, Sora and Grok were tied. Claude and Copilot, two AI app releases, were easily beaten by it. On the first day, the former received 21,000 downloads, whilst the latter received just 7,000.

By day two, Sora has risen to the third position overall in the U.S. App Store’s top charts. In contrast, Grok was ranked No. 4, Gemini was ranked No. 6, Copilot was ranked No. 19, and Claude was ranked No. 78 on its second day, while ChatGPT achieved No. 1.

Also, Cameo is the most well-liked feature on Sora. You record your voice and face when you create an account, allowing Sora to use your likeness to create scenes using artificial intelligence.

You can allow others to make AI videos using your Sora likeness. For instance, I was able to create an AI film featuring OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claiming that rival Gemini is superior to ChatGPT.

The user-friendly AI technology has stoked worries that it would make it simpler for malicious actors to produce convincing deepfakes and that it will become more difficult for everyone to tell what is artificial intelligence (AI)-generated and what is real.

Another indication that generative media is becoming more and more popular among IT businesses and their consumers is Sora’s top rating. Gemini secured Apple’s top spot last month, partly because of its well-liked AI image generator, “nano banana.”

Earlier last year, OpenAI introduced picture generation to ChatGPT, which led to a trend of users creating AI portraits of themselves in the recognisable (and copyrighted) Studio Ghibli style. To support its upcoming AI creative solutions, Meta inked a partnership with AI creative business Midjourney. However, not all creators agree, with many raising serious ethical and legal issues.