{"slug": "sam-altman-deleted-tiktok-because-he-could-not-stop-scrolling-openai-killed-sora", "title": "Sam Altman deleted TikTok because he could not stop scrolling. OpenAI killed Sora for the same reason.", "summary": "OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he deleted TikTok after becoming addicted to the app while studying it for the development of Sora, OpenAI's AI-generated video social network that was scrapped in March. Altman described the experience on the \"Relentless\" podcast, saying he started with 10 minutes before bed and eventually spent three hours on a Saturday afternoon, calling the app \"too powerful.\" OpenAI abandoned Sora because video generation consumed too much compute, and Altman contrasted the addictive design with OpenAI's goal for ChatGPT and the upcoming Jony Ive AI device to minimize user time spent.", "body_md": "#### TL;DR\n\n*Altman said he got “addicted” to TikTok while studying it for Sora. He deleted it after a 3-hour Saturday session. OpenAI killed Sora in March. The company says ChatGPT is designed not to trap users.*\n\nAltman forced himself to learn TikTok for Sora's development. He ended up on the couch for three hours. OpenAI abandoned the app in March. The Jony Ive device is supposed to be the antidote.\n\n*Altman said he got “addicted” to TikTok while studying it for Sora. He deleted it after a 3-hour Saturday session. OpenAI killed Sora in March. The company says ChatGPT is designed not to trap users.*\n\n[Sam Altman deleted TikTok](https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-tiktok-addiction-2026-7?utm_campaign=business-link-post&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter) because he could not stop using it. The OpenAI CEO said on the “*Relentless*” podcast that he forced himself to learn the app while OpenAI was building Sora, its AI-generated video social network. “*I made myself get addicted to TikTok, because I wanted to just learn,*” he said. He started with 10 minutes before bed. Then it was an hour. Then it was three hours on a Saturday afternoon. “*I was really enjoying it in the moment like a drug,*” he said. He deleted the app.\n\nOpenAI deleted Sora too. The company scrapped the app in March after roughly six months, deciding that video generation consumed too much compute at a time when Anthropic and other competitors were pushing the frontier AI race further. Sora had attracted a Disney partnership and significant attention, but the economics did not work. The parallel is hard to miss: Altman found TikTok too consuming to keep, and OpenAI found Sora too consuming to sustain.\n\nAltman discussed the experience in the context of the Jony Ive AI device, which OpenAI has said it will unveil before the end of the year. Altman has said he wants the device to cut through the notification noise that makes phones feel like “*walking through Times Square.*” [Google rebuilt Search around AI summaries](https://thenextweb.com/news/google-search-ai-overhaul-publishers-traffic-open-web) to keep users inside its ecosystem longer. Altman is arguing OpenAI should do the opposite: build a product people use briefly and leave. “*Instead of measuring success by time spent or clicks, we care more about whether you leave the product having done what you came for,*” OpenAI said last August.\n\nThe admission is revealing because it comes from the person building the AI systems that power the next generation of recommendation algorithms. Altman experienced firsthand that TikTok’s algorithm is, in his words, “too powerful,” and that even someone who understood exactly what was happening could not resist it. [Wharton researchers found that people accept AI outputs 80% of the time](https://thenextweb.com/news/wharton-cognitive-surrender-ai-chatbots-decisions-moot-app), even when wrong. TikTok’s algorithm is not wrong. It is precisely right about what keeps you watching. The CEO of the world’s most valuable AI company could not outsmart it. That is the most honest product review TikTok has ever received.\n\nGet the most important tech news in your inbox each week.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sam-altman-deleted-tiktok-because-he-could-not-stop-scrolling-openai-killed-sora", "canonical_source": "https://thenextweb.com/news/sam-altman-tiktok-addiction-deleted-openai-sora", "published_at": "2026-07-27 17:50:18+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-27 18:00:11.848879+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Sam Altman", "OpenAI", "TikTok", "Sora", "Jony Ive", "Anthropic", "Google", "Wharton"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sam-altman-deleted-tiktok-because-he-could-not-stop-scrolling-openai-killed-sora", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sam-altman-deleted-tiktok-because-he-could-not-stop-scrolling-openai-killed-sora.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sam-altman-deleted-tiktok-because-he-could-not-stop-scrolling-openai-killed-sora.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sam-altman-deleted-tiktok-because-he-could-not-stop-scrolling-openai-killed-sora.jsonld"}}