Dozens of copies of Sora invade the App Store, earn $160,000 and expose Apple’s failures

After the controversy over copyright, comes another controversial issue regarding the OpenAI app. The massive interest in Sora has been the perfect bait for a wave of scammers in the App Store. After the app’s official launch last week, the Apple store was flooded with dozens of fake applications who used the name “Sora” or “Sora 2” to deceive users.

As TechCrunch reports, the most worrying thing about the case is that these applications managed to circumvent Apple’s review processdespite using a well-known trade name registered by OpenAI. According to an analysis by the Appfigures platform, many of these apps were not new, but rather existing applications that simply changed their name to take advantage of the hype. Together, the copies achieved more than 300,000 downloads, 80,000 of which occurred just after the launch of the official app.

What’s up with Apple’s moderation in the App Store?

Although it is common for these criticisms to be directed at Google and the Play Store, in this case Sora is only available in the App Store. It seems, therefore, that the Cupertino filter is not the most reliable either. In fact, the success of the scam translated into real benefits for its creators (and for Apple, if payments were made within the app). It is estimated that these applications collectively generated more than $160,000 in a short period of time. Just one of the copies, called “Sora 2 – AI Video Generator”, surpassed 50,000 installs on its own.

After the problem is detected, Apple began removing many of these fraudulent applications from its store. However, there were still some active ones, which shows that the company’s control system for the App Store is not as robust as it is thought.