It appears that users in the EU and UK won’t get access to Sora — OpenAI’s video generation model — at launch.
A newly published help page on OpenAI’s website listing the supported regions for Sora “on web and mobile” omits all EU countries. On the page, OpenAI notes that accessing Sora outside the territories listed may result in an account ban or suspension.
Looks like Sora won’t be available in EU & UK https://t.co/WYnARYueHc pic.twitter.com/ApRbL3iH8S
— Tibor Blaho (@btibor91) December 9, 2024
We’ve reached out to OpenAI for comment and will update this piece if we hear back.
It’s not the first time OpenAI has skipped over EU countries for an initial product launch. This summer, when the company began rolling out Advanced Voice Mode, its human-like conversational feature for ChatGPT, EU users were left out of the early waves.
In a statement provided to TechRadar this fall, OpenAI attributed the Advanced Voice Mode delay to the “additional external reviews” required by some territories. “This is a common practice to ensure [our] feature aligns with local requirements,” a spokesperson told the publication at the time. “These [reviews] can take a little time.”
Advanced Voice Mode arrived for most EU customers in October.
Other tech companies working on AI models and products, including Meta and Microsoft, have also been forced to push back AI product releases in the EU due to the bloc’s complex web of data privacy regulations. Meta has been particularly vocal about compliance requirements it sees as onerous, earlier this year endorsing an open letter calling for “a modern interpretation” of European privacy laws that doesn’t “reject [AI] progress.”
