Is ChatGPT's Sora App Coming To Android? Everything You Need To Know

OpenAI's Sora 2 app has spent just over two weeks in the public domain, and it has gone viral. The AI video generator even broke ChatGPT's record of amassing a million downloads at a quicker pace. One question, in particular, has puzzled interested users ever since its release on the App Store: When, or if, is an Android version coming? Well, the app has been officially listed on the Google Play Store, which means its Android availability is right around the corner.

As per the Play Store logs, the app was last updated on October 11; but so far, there is no release data attached to it. OpenAI has also not mentioned anything about its arrival on the Android ecosystem yet. But if it comes as any consolation, Microsoft pushed the AI video generation on its Azure AI Foundry for developers just a day ago, and it is now widely available to all interested parties at a cost of $0.10 per second of video at HD resolution.

This Sora 2 development is interesting, but still far from a solid indication that the Android-side release is happening in the coming days. The same day as Microsoft's Azure listing of Sora 2 for its cloud customers, OpenAI also announced that the AI tool can now generate 15-second videos, while Pro subscribers get the ability to create longer 25-second clips. The company also added a new storyboard feature that offers users more control over the scene they want to achieve. As far as access goes, Sora 2 should initially be free for Android users, just like its iPhone release, with an expanded usage limit for paying customers.

Soon after Sora 2 was launched, the App Store was quickly littered with fake Sora apps. Citing data shared by Appfigures, TechCrunch reported that there were more than a dozen fake Sora apps that popped up on Apple's store on launch day. Worryingly, more than half of them listed "Sora 2" in their name to deceive users. These apps raked in over 300,000 installations, and 80,000 of them were logged after the official Sora 2 app was released. It's not an unusual tactic: Fakes of popular apps, often with similar names or image assets, aim for Google and Apple's app repositories, usually serving ads or malware instead of anything useful.

Nadeem Sarwar/SlashGear

It seems bad actors are already readying themselves ahead of Sora 2's release on Android, seemingly in an attempt to cash in on the hype. SlashGear has already spotted three such fake apps on the Google Play Store, two of which have "Sora" and "Sora 2" in their names. It's unclear how these counterfeit apps get past Google's security checks, especially when there's another (legitimate) app listed by the same name on Google's mobile app store. It's evident that these names are purportedly trying to mislead users.

One of the apps, named "Sora," mentions that it's a "platform to electronically sign what you previously signed on paper." The other one, listed as "Sora 2 AI Video Maker" clearly mentions that it's an AI video generator. These fake apps are often riddled with bugs, ads, or aggressive paywalls, and dupe users into paying for a subscription that barely does anything, if at all.