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

The launch of OpenAI's exclusive mobile app, Sora, has sparked a wave of imitation apps flooding Apple's App Store. Following the app's debut last week, numerous fraudulent applications emerged, branding themselves as "Sora" or "Sora 2," a nod to the new AI video model that accompanied the official release. Despite the trademarked name being widely recognized in the tech community, these impostors managed to bypass Apple's App Review process, appearing publicly in the App Store. Research from app intelligence platform Appfigures, requested by TechCrunch, revealed that over a dozen apps using the "Sora" name went live shortly after the official app's launch. Alarmingly, more than half of these apps included "Sora 2" in their titles, clearly aiming to leverage the heightened interest. Some of these deceptive apps were not new entrants; in fact, many had been available on the App Store under different names for months, if not longer. Collectively, these impostors have amassed around 300,000 downloads, with over 80,000 occurring after the official Sora app's release. In comparison, OpenAI's official app has already reached 1 million downloads. Almost all of the fake apps received updates shortly after the launch of Sora to take advantage of the surge in consumer demand and searches, frequently changing their names in the process. It remains unclear how these applications managed to evade Apple's scrutiny, although many have since been removed from the App Store according to Appfigures. The most prominent among the imitation apps was "Sora 2 – AI Video Generator," which saw over 50,000 downloads following the official launch. As of now, a handful of Sora-branded apps still exist on the platform, including "PetReels — Sora for Pets," which garnered only a few hundred installs, and "Viral AI Photo Maker: Vi-sora," which has struggled to gain popularity. Another app, named "Sora 2 – Video Generator Ai," has achieved over 6,000 downloads. In total, these counterfeit applications have generated more than $160,000, a notable sum given their brief existence. Apple was approached for comments regarding how these Sora-branded apps were able to launch and whether they would be taken down, but the company did not respond before this article was published.