OpenAI is presently featuring two applications in the App Store’s top 3, although it remains behind Gemini, largely due to the ongoing success of Google’s Nano Banana image model. Here’s why that is significant.
On September 30, OpenAI launched Sora, a social application fueled by a much-anticipated updated version of its initial generative video model. Even though it is invite-only, the app has been gaining significant traction, recording 56,000 downloads in the US on its launch day and 108,000 on its second day, as reported by AppFigures.
The download figures for the first day, noted by TechCrunch, place Sora’s introduction “on par with xAI’s Grok launch,” yet still behind ChatGPT and Gemini, which achieved 81,000 and 80,000 downloads on their debut days, respectively.
### What AI Fatigue?
In spite of persistent claims and hot takes asserting that “regular people don’t care about AI,” the ongoing success of Gemini at the App Store’s summit, with OpenAI closely trailing behind with two apps, implies a different narrative.
Interestingly, two of the current top 3 applications in the App Store heavily depend on multimodality, moving beyond the text-first strategy of ChatGPT, which indicates that typical users may be more inclined to engage with image and video-oriented AI features instead of models focused primarily on text. At least when they’re on their phones.
Regardless, while Elon Musk takes legal action against Apple and OpenAI due to the apparent lack of enthusiasm from users regarding Grok, Google and OpenAI appear to be connecting with users more effortlessly.
Gemini continues to attract attention for its capacity to produce images that closely align with references, while Sora’s combination of social features and hyper-realistic video creation is likely to propel both its momentum and the (very real) increasing controversy surrounding trademark infringement and AI slop.
Have you had a chance to use Sora? Share your thoughts in the comments.
