admin
Big Tech’s habit of throwing money at vanity projects reached a new peak this week with reporting that OpenAI’s flashy Sora video app may be burning as much as $15 million a day. Conservative Americans who believe in prudent stewardship of capital should be alarmed that a private company with lofty ambitions is running what looks like an industrial-scale loss machine to feed a social feed of AI-generated nonsense.
The arithmetic behind the headline is ugly but simple: analysts estimate a single 10-second Sora clip costs roughly $1.30 to produce, and with millions of downloads and a fraction of users churning out multiple clips a day, the daily bill balloons into the double digits of millions. Those are not hyperbole numbers dreamed up by critics — they come from industry analyst estimates and app usage math that, when laid out, make the reported burn rate painfully plausible.
Even insiders sound the alarm. OpenAI’s own Sora lead conceded the current economics aren’t sustainable, which should make investors, partners, and elected officials take notice instead of applauding every new demo. At the same time OpenAI trumpets safety features and provenance markers, the company’s public admissions show the product was unleashed before a viable business model or mature guardrails were truly in place.
The fallout isn’t just financial; creators and civil society are worried about rights and deepfakes. Major Hollywood players and talent agencies have warned that Sora threatens creator compensation and control, while advocacy groups have urged regulators to step in over the real risk of nonconsensual or harmful AI videos. This is exactly the kind of consequence-free Silicon Valley experimentation that conservatives have warned can erode property rights and public trust.
Enough with subsidized disruption masquerading as innovation. The federal government should not become the backstop for crown-jewel tech companies that decide to burn through billions for market share while leaving creators and consumers to pick up the pieces. If a private venture wants to pursue a reckless growth-at-all-costs playbook, it should do so on its own balance sheet — not by expecting anyone to underwrite its mistakes.
There’s a market solution and a policy solution: markets should punish recklessness, and Congress should ask pointed questions about consumer harms, data collection, and the sustainability of these business models. OpenAI touts provenance tags and consent controls as mitigation, but those technical fixes don’t excuse profligate spending or the erosion of creative rights; regulators and investors alike must demand accountability before the next big AI craze eats another chunk of capital and civility.
