Update: Since this post was published yesterday, Sora has reached the top spot on the App Store.
OpenAI currently has two apps in the App Store’s top 3, but it’s still behind Gemini, thanks to the sustained success of Google’s Nano Banana image model. Here’s why that matters.
On September 30, OpenAI released Sora, a social app powered by a much-anticipated revamped version of its original generative video model.
Despite being invite-only, the app has been gathering considerable momentum, with 56,000 installs in the US on its first day and 108,000 installs during its second day, according to AppFigures.
The first-day download numbers, as observed by TechCrunch, put Sora’s debut “on par with xAI’s Grok launch,” but behind ChatGPT and Gemini, which saw 81,000 and 80,000 downloads on debut day, respectively.
What AI fatigue?
Despite frequent outcries and hot takes that “regular people don’t care about AI,” the sustained success of Gemini at the top of the App Store, with OpenAI trailing closely behind with not one, but two apps, suggests otherwise.
Interestingly, two out of the current top 3 apps on the App Store rely heavily on multimodality, beyond the text-first approach of ChatGPT, which suggests regular users may be more eager to interact with image and video-based AI features, rather than AI models that are primarily text-based. At least on their phones.
Be it as it may, while Elon Musk sues Apple and OpenAI due to the fact that users don’t seem excited about Grok, Google and OpenAI seem to be finding it easier to resonate with users.
Gemini is still making the rounds for its ability to generate images that closely match references, while Sora’s mix of social features and hyper-realistic video generation will likely drive both its momentum and the (very real) mounting controversy over trademark infringement and AI slop.
Have you been using Sora? Let us know in the comments.
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