OpenAI shut down Sora, their AI video generator, six months after launch. The entire entertainment industry had panicked. Hollywood studios. Disney. Marvel. Celebrities sued. Copyright lawyers had a field day. LinkedIn told us animation was over... Then OpenAI pulled the plug.

In this episode, Juan and Kate break down the full collapse: $5 billion in annual compute costs against $2.1 million in lifetime revenue, a deepfake problem that no guardrail could contain, a Disney deal that evaporated before a single dollar changed hands, and an IPO clock that made shutting it all down the only move that made sense.

👉 Was Disney lucky, or just smart enough not to have paid yet? Tell us in the comments.

CHAPTERS

00:00 OpenAI Shut Down Sora Six Months After Launch. Here's Why.

01:07 What Sora Actually Was and Why Everyone Freaked Out

02:35 Was Sora Ever About Entertainment — or Just Data Collection?

03:07 The Compute Crisis: GPUs Melting and $5 Billion a Year

04:10 The Legal Liability: Deepfakes OpenAI Couldn't Control

04:47 Brian Cranston and SAG-AFTRA Pushed Back

05:01 Martin Luther King, Mr. Rogers, and the Deepfake Problem

06:04 Sora Made $2.1 Million. OpenAI Spent $5 Billion.

06:15 Why OpenAI Needed to Clean House Before Going Public

07:31 The Adult Chat Is Gone Too — OpenAI Cuts Everything for the IPO

08:01 Disney's Billion-Dollar Bet on a Product That No Longer Exists

09:48 Disney's New CEO Inherited a Deal He Never Liked

10:37 Fidji Simo Told Employees to Stop the Side Quests

11:06 We Called This Months Ago — Here Are the Receipts

12:00 The Real Side Quest Was Never Sora. It Was the Whole Strategy.

13:15 OpenAI's Only Way Out Is Government Contracts

13:47 The App Is Gone. The AI Slop in Your Feed Is Not.

ABOUT SLOP WORLD

AI news with receipts. Juan Faisal and Kate Cook fact-check the claims Big Tech is making about AI, follow the money, and break down what it actually means for your job, your data, and your daily life.

From leaked data and corporate cover-ups to AI schools, stolen identities, and layoff headlines that don't add up, we cover the AI stories that everyone's hyping but nobody's verifying.

New episodes every Thursday.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

- We called it! OpenAI's Chaotic Strategy Is Backfiring: https://youtu.be/1q4lJ4EW1g4

- OpenAI Is Shutting Down Sora: https://techcrunch.com/

- OpenAI's Head of Sora Said the GPUs "Are Melting": https://www.nbcnews.com/

- Sora Made $2.1 Million Lifetime in In-App Purchases: https://techcrunch.com/

- OpenAI Retains Law Firm That Managed Google's 2004 IPO: https://stackingtrades.com/

DISCLAIMER

All content is commentary and opinion based on publicly available documents, interviews, and verifiable sources. References to "scams," "grifts," or related terms reflect our editorial opinion, not legal conclusions. Anyone featured who believes a statement is inaccurate may contact us.

AI layoffs: 160 official filings. Zero cited AI. So why is every CEO suddenly blaming it?

Juan and Kate dig into the paper trail behind the AI layoffs narrative... and it doesn't say what the headlines claim.

It's the end of Q1 2026, and "AI efficiency" has become the most powerful two words a CEO can say before an earnings call. But researchers who reviewed 160 official NY State layoff filings — including Amazon and Goldman Sachs — found not one that cited AI as the reason. The real drivers: pandemic over-hiring, rising interest rates, and a stock market that rewards the framing. Even Ethan Mollick, the most-cited AI researcher alive, is saying "no one knows anything" about actual productivity gains yet.

We break down Jack Dorsey cutting half of Block's workforce after tripling headcount during COVID, Zuckerberg claiming AI saves money while committing $65 billion to AI infrastructure this year alone, and the copycat effect where one high-profile announcement triggers a wave of CEOs rushing to say the same thing before their next earnings call.

Plus: what happens when AI stops being subsidized, tokens become part of your job offer, and your company starts tracking how many prompts you run. That leaderboard is also a layoff list.

🫟 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

- AI Job Apocalypse Warnings Risk Becoming A Self-Fulfilling Prophesy: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2026/02/17/talk-of-ai-job-apocalypse-risks-becoming-a-self-fulfilling-prophesy/

- No Company Has Admitted to Replacing Workers With AI in New York: https://www.wired.com/story/no-company-has-admitted-to-replacing-workers-with-ai-in-new-york/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

- Is AI the Strategy—or the Scapegoat—Behind Block’s 40% Layoff? https://news.darden.virginia.edu/2026/03/13/is-ai-the-strategy-or-the-scapegoat-behind-blocks-40-layoff/

- Sam Altman thinks tech companies are ‘AI-washing’ their layoffs: https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article/layoffs-sam-altman-ai-washing-21647451.php

🫟 CHAPTERS

00:00 AI Layoffs 2026: The Story They Want You to Believe

00:40 Sam Altman Called It AI-Washing (Then Changed His Mind)

01:32 Jack Dorsey, Block, and the Pandemic Headcount Trick

02:40 The Most-Quoted AI Researcher Alive Says "No One Knows Anything"

03:25 Why Saying "AI Did It" Makes Your Stock Pop

04:45 The Copycat Effect: One CEO Pulls the Trigger for All

05:58 Andrew Yang Named This: The AI Layoff Contagion

06:48 Zuckerberg Saves Money (?) by Spending $65B on AI

07:27 Employee Morale Doesn't Show Up on the Balance Sheet

08:52 Congrats, You Survived the Layoff... Now Do Everyone's Job

10:02 Digg Came Back... AI Bots Killed It in Weeks

10:37 The Future of Work: One Person = One Team?

13:08 The Token Economy and the End of Cheap AI

14:26 Tokens Are the New Benefits (Your Boss Already Knows)

15:10 If Your Company Is Tracking Your AI Use, Layoffs Are Next

🫟 ABOUT SLOP WORLD

Juan Faisal and Kate Cook plunge into the slop pile—AI news, cultural shifts, and the future’s endless curveballs. They’re not here to sanitize the mess; they’re here to wrestle with it, laugh at it, and find meaning where you least expect it.

Grammarly cloned Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists with AI — charged $12/month for their "expert advice" — and never told a single one of them. Now there's a class-action lawsuit, a CEO's "sorry-not-sorry" apology and, of course, an out-of-touch Sam Altman quote that puts the cherry on top.

Juan and Kate break down how the company formerly known as Grammarly (now Superhuman) created AI Slopelgangers — degraded digital copies of real people, monetized without consent, credit, or even letting them know about it. Watch to find out why the apology might be worse than the scandal.

Full disclosure: Juan was a Grammarly brand ambassador and has since parted ways with the company.

🫟 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

- Grammarly Is Offering ‘Expert’ AI Reviews From Your Favorite Authors—Dead or Alive: https://www.wired.com/story/grammarly-is-offering-expert-ai-reviews-from-your-favorite-authors-dead-or-alive/

- Grammarly Offering Manuscript Reviews by AI Versions of Recently Deceased Professors: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/grammarly-ai-reviews

- Grammarly Hit With Class-Action Suit Over AI Identity Theft: https://www.techbuzz.ai/articles/grammarly-hit-with-class-action-suit-over-ai-identity-theft

- Sam Altman Says Intelligence Will Be a Utility, and He’s Just the Man to Collect the Bills: https://gizmodo.com/sam-altman-says-intelligence-will-be-a-utility-and-hes-just-the-man-to-collect-the-bills-2000732953

🫟 CHAPTERS

00:00 What If Someone Was Already Selling Advice In Your Name?

00:21 The Billion Dollar Company Behind This

01:00 “Sloppelgängers”: The Term That Explains Everything

01:18 Why I Walked Away From Grammarly (Full Disclosure)

01:43 When Grammarly Actually Made You Better

02:32 Stephen King, Carl Sagan, and a $12/Month Price Tag on Your Identity

03:04 The $5M Lawsuit That Triggered This

03:29 The CEO Wrote an Apology. It Backfired.

04:03 Did He Even Need to Apologize?

04:55 This Could Have Been a Great Idea

05:25 They Didn’t Ask. They Didn’t Tell Anyone

05:49 She Tested Her Own AI Clone… It Was Bad

06:00 This Was Actively Damaging People’s Reputation

06:25 This Starts to Feel Like Theft... and Slander

07:03 Grammarly Says “The Lawsuit Has No Merit”

08:35 Big Tech Already Decided Who Owns Your Work

10:10 Grammarly Lost Its Edge. This Was the Move

11:23 This Is About To Hit Every Company

12:00 They Take Your Work… Then Sell It Back To You

12:55 This Is Coming For You Too

🫟 ABOUT SLOP WORLD

Juan Faisal and Kate Cook plunge into the slop pile—AI news, cultural shifts, and the future’s endless curveballs. They’re not here to sanitize the mess; they’re here to wrestle with it, laugh at it, and find meaning where you least expect it.