OpenAI's Sora: The Social Commerce Play Hidden in Plain Sight

Okay, I know what you're thinking. "Another OpenAI article? Really? Can't you write about literally anything else?"

Look, I get it. This is like my third OpenAI piece in two weeks. At this point, I should probably just rename this newsletter "OpenAI Weekly" and call it a day. My partner asked me yesterday if Sam Altman is paying me (he's not, unfortunately), and my mom called to ask if I'm "okay" because apparently all I talk about at family dinners now is ChatGPT's native checkout and AI browsers eating the internet.

But here's the thing—OpenAI keeps DOING stuff. Like, every time I think "okay, I'll write about something else next week," they drop another bomb that makes me pace around my apartment at 2 AM eating stress crackers and muttering "what does this MEAN?"

This week's bomb? Sora 2. Their new TikTok-style video platform. And I've been pacing around my apartment for the past three hours trying to wrap my head around this, because I think I finally see what's happening here.

Everyone's talking about how Sora is "just another video app" or "OpenAI's TikTok clone." But here's what's making me lose even more sleep than usual (and trust me, between their browser announcements, Operator launches, and whatever else they dropped while I was typing this sentence, my sleep schedule is already destroyed): they announced Sora literally DAYS after adding native checkout to ChatGPT.

Days!

That's not a coincidence, that's a strategy, and honestly, it's kind of brilliant in a way that makes me both excited and deeply uncomfortable. Like, I want to be mad about how much mental real estate OpenAI is taking up in my brain, but I'm also genuinely fascinated by what they're building here.

The Data Game Nobody's Talking About (But Should Be)

So here's what hit me at 1 AM while I was supposed to be sleeping but was instead watching Sora demos on repeat like some kind of masochist: OpenAI desperately needs what Meta has—billions of daily social interactions that reveal how humans actually behave when they think nobody's watching.

Think about it. Meta's AI is scary good because it knows everything about us. Not just what we search for, but what we pause on while scrolling at 2 AM, what we share with that one group chat, what makes us angry-react versus heart-react. (Yes, they know about your 3 AM rage-scrolling sessions. We all have them. It's fine.)

OpenAI's been stuck with just our ChatGPT conversations, which is like trying to understand human nature by only reading formal emails. Sure, it's useful, but it misses all the messy, impulsive, gloriously irrational stuff that makes us actually human.

The Sora app changes that. Every swipe, every share, every "wait, let me watch that again"—it's all feeding into OpenAI's understanding of what makes us tick. And that algorithmic feed that factors in your location, past engagement, and even your ChatGPT history? (You can opt out, but let's be real, who's going to bother?) That's not just a recommendation engine. That's a behavioral microscope pointed directly at our shopping souls.

The Commerce Play That Actually Makes Sense (Once You Squint at It)

Here's where my brain started doing that thing where it connects dots that maybe shouldn't be connected but hear me out.

ChatGPT is AMAZING at helping you research which laptop to buy. It'll compare specs, read reviews, tell you why DDR5 RAM matters (spoiler: it probably doesn't for what you're doing). But you know what ChatGPT absolutely sucks at? Making you impulse-buy that ridiculous cat sweater you saw at midnight.

Because here's the thing about shopping that took me embarrassingly long to realize: we shop in completely different modes depending on what we're buying. There's Research Mode (laptop shopping), and there's Vibe Mode (that cat sweater). ChatGPT owns Research Mode. But Vibe Mode? That's all visual, all emotional, all "I didn't know I needed this until I saw it."

Enter Sora 2.

Short-form video is basically cocaine for our impulse-buying brains. TikTok Shop proved this by generating billions (BILLIONS!) in sales by making shopping feel like entertainment. Now OpenAI has both pieces: the nerdy research assistant AND the fun friend who enables your bad decisions. Whether they can actually make these two personalities work together without having an identity crisis remains to be seen, but honestly, I'm morbidly curious to watch them try.

The "Cameos" Feature That's Definitely Not Creepy (Okay, It's a Little Creepy)

Can we talk about this "cameos" thing for a second? You upload videos of yourself, and then Sora can put you into any generated scene. They're selling it as a creative tool, but my paranoid brain immediately went to: "Holy shopping manipulation potential, Batman!"

Now, to be clear, OpenAI hasn't said anything about letting advertisers use this for marketing. Yet. But imagine where this could go (and I hate that I'm imagining this): What if, eventually, brands could generate personalized ads using these capabilities? You're scrolling through Sora, and suddenly there's a video of YOU wearing that jacket you were looking at last week. Not a model who kind of looks like you. Actually you. In your actual life context.

I mean, they'd probably need explicit permissions and there'd be privacy regulations and all that boring legal stuff. But we all know how these things evolve, right? It starts with "make fun videos with your friends!" and three years later it's "would you like to see yourself driving this car? Just click here!"

The psychological impact of seeing yourself with a product—even if it's AI-generated—would be INSANE. We already know that mental imagery of owning something makes us more likely to buy it. Now imagine that mental imagery could theoretically become an actual video. Of you. Using the thing.

I need to lie down.

What This Means for Anyone Selling Stuff Online (Spoiler: Everything Changes)

Look, I've been in e-commerce long enough to know that every few years, someone announces "THE FUTURE OF SHOPPING" and usually it's just QR codes or something equally disappointing. But this feels different. This feels like watching Google eat the Yellow Pages, but for shopping.

If you're selling on Amazon or running your own store, here's what's keeping me up at night:

Dynamic Everything: Remember when we all freaked out about having to create mobile-responsive websites? This is going to be like that, but worse. Every product might need infinite personalized video variations. Your static product photos are about to look as outdated as a GeoCities website.

The Closed Loop Problem: OpenAI now controls discovery (Sora's feed) AND transaction (ChatGPT's checkout). That's like if Google and Amazon had a baby, and that baby was raised by robots. They're building a shopping ecosystem where they control every touchpoint. That should terrify us all a little bit.

Free Until It's Not: They're making Sora free initially, only charging for peak-demand video generation. Classic drug dealer move—first taste is free. They're prioritizing data collection and user acquisition over money, which means they're playing the long game. The expensive long game.

The Part Where I Pretend to Be Optimistic

Okay, deep breath. Is this the end of e-commerce as we know it? Maybe. Probably. Actually, definitely, but in a slow, "boiling frog" kind of way where we don't notice until we're already cooked.

But here's the thing (she says, desperately searching for a silver lining): humans are weird. We're irrational. We buy things for reasons that no AI will ever fully understand. Like that time I bought a $200 Japanese notebook because the paper felt nice. Try explaining that to an algorithm.

The winners in this new world won't be the ones who fight the AI takeover (that's a losing battle, trust me). They'll be the ones who figure out how to make AI work for them while maintaining that human weirdness that makes shopping actually fun.

The Bottom Line

OpenAI isn't just trying to build a TikTok competitor. They're building a complete reimagining of how we discover and buy things. It's ambitious, it's slightly terrifying, and it's probably inevitable.

The combination of ChatGPT's research capabilities and Sora's potential for emotional manipulation—I mean, "engagement"—could create something we've never seen before: an AI ecosystem that might eventually guide you through every type of purchase, from the most considered to the most impulsive. If they can pull it off. And if regulations don't kill it. And if we all collectively decide we're okay with this level of AI involvement in our shopping lives (spoiler: we probably will be, we always are).

For those of us trying to sell things online, the message is clear: adapt or become irrelevant. Start experimenting with AI-generated content now. Figure out how to make your products work in this new world where the line between content and commerce doesn't just blur—it completely disappears.

And maybe, just maybe, keep some of that human weirdness that makes shopping more than just an efficient transfer of money for goods. Because if we lose that, we lose something important, even if I can't quite articulate what that something is.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go upload my face to Sora so I can see myself in that cat sweater. For research purposes, obviously.

P.S. - Yes, I realize the irony of worrying about AI taking over while literally using AI to write about AI. My therapist says I need to work on my cognitive dissonance. I told her she should worry about being replaced by an AI therapist. She didn't laugh.

• Brand Purpose … Are consumers aware to care?

• Claude Code boosts velocity at Anthropic, automates workflows, closes skill gaps across teams, a blueprint for company wide AI adoption.

• CMOs say 45% of marketing data is bad, making data quality the top lever, so fix completeness consistency and governance or AI will amplify errors.

• Skip the content engineer and invest in marketers who ship original research, platform native storytelling, and experiments that AI can amplify as scale tactics fade.

• A good listen to Andrej at the AI Startup School - how has software changed in the new era of Ai?

  

• Kellanova’s AI impact scoring

• GPT 5 Thinking adds Light Standard Extended Heavy so power users can trade speed for deeper reasoning and tune outputs to the task.

• Recover ChatGPT 404 Traffic with GA4

• Neon Mobile pays to record your calls and sells the audio to AI firms

• Five agent wins for marketers 

• Claude X Figma, turning your design into code.

  

• OpenAI adds shared projects and smarter connectors for Business with strict admin controls and no training by default, letting teams share files and context across key apps.

⚙️ Agent Minimax - Research, PPT, Code and more with Minimax . A global AI foundation model company.

✍️ SEO.ing - Your Go-To Solution for Quick, Effective, and SEO-Optimized Article Writing

🖼️ Krea 1 - Powerful free AI image generator

🧑‍🏫 PI Presentation Intelligence - Ai-Native Design & Sharing Platform, generate presentations in seconds.

👩🏼‍🎨 Sesame - A Creative Tool Purpose-built for Brand Expression

🧠 Tila - Infinite AI canvas. Top neural networks in a single hub

😍It was great, all I needed

🙂Good, not great

🙄It sucked