Sora copycats flooded Apple’s App Store, and some still remain

Sora’s rapid adoption drove a number of App Store scammers to try to get in on the act. Following the launch of OpenAI’s invite-only, video-generating mobile app last week, Apple’s App Store was flooded with fakes that also proclaimed themselves to be “Sora” or “Sora 2” — the latter a reference to the underlying new AI video model that was released alongside the mobile app.

These apps somehow made it past Apple’s App Review process. They actually had public listings on the App Store, despite using a brand name that’s trademarked by OpenAI and fairly well known in the tech industry even before the app’s debut.

According to research provided to TechCrunch upon our request by app intelligence platform Appfigures, there were over a dozen “Sora”-branded apps that went live on the App Store after the official app’s launch. Over half of them used “Sora 2” in their names specifically. (One of those was spotted by Apple blogger and pundit, John Gruber, who called it the “App Store scam of the week.”)

Many of the apps were not newcomers, either. Some had been live on the App Store — sometimes using other names — since earlier in the year or even last year. The impostors, which include those live on Google Play as well, had seen around 300,000 collective installs to date, with north of 80,000 installs coming in after Sora’s official app launch. (OpenAI has since announced that Sora’s official mobile app has been downloaded 1 million times, for comparison.)

Nearly all of the impostors had been updated just after OpenAI’s Sora app launch to capitalize on consumer demand and searches, often by changing their name.

It’s unclear how these apps were able to slip past Apple’s reviewers; Apple did end up pulling many of them from its App Store, Appfigures said.

Of the imposter apps, the largest one was named “Sora 2 – AI Video Generator” — an obvious attempt to game App Store searches for the keyword “sora.” It saw more than 50,000 installs after the launch of the official app.

As of the time of writing, a few Sora-branded apps are still live, despite the potential for consumer confusion. One, “PetReels — Sora for Pets,” has seen only a few hundred installs, however. Another one, “Viral AI Photo Maker: Vi-sora” is trying to squeeze the word Sora in there but hasn’t gained traction, either.

Doing slightly better is the app using the branding “Sora 2” in its name (Sora 2 – Video Generator Ai). It’s pulled in north of 6,000 downloads and counting.

Collectively, the apps earned more than $160,000 — decent money considering their short lives.

Apple was asked for comment on how Sora-branded apps were able to go live and if these remaining Sora-branded apps would be removed. It did not respond prior to publication.