⚠️ DISCONTINUED — OpenAI confirmed the consumer shutdown of Sora on April 26, 2026. The platform is no longer available. The most concrete casualty: the AI feature film Critterz missed its planned Cannes Film Festival window after the infrastructure collapse; producers are now searching for a new production partner targeting Q1 2027. Sora 2 launched September 2025 with physics-aware generation, audio-visual content creation, and identity-verified cameo features. The shutdown serves as a reminder: single-platform dependency for your content pipeline is an existential risk. Maintain a tested fallback — Runway Gen-4, Kling AI, Google Gemini Omni Flash, and Luma Ray 3 are all active alternatives.

Google's AI video platform — now free for every Google account holder. April 2, 2026: Google opened Veo 3.1 inside Google Vids to all standard Google accounts at no cost. 10 free clips/month, up to 8 seconds each, 720p, from text prompt or uploaded image. Ranked by Zapier as the best all-around AI video generator for overall quality. Paid tiers add AI avatars, Lyria 3 music, and volume. Previously required paid Workspace tiers. Also features native 9:16 vertical video, character consistency, and SynthID watermarking.

Professional AI video generation platform that received a landmark update on May 21, 2026 with the release of Aleph 2.0 and Edit Studio — described by the community as 'Photoshop for video.' Unlike standard AI video generation that creates new clips from scratch, Aleph 2.0 makes localized, targeted edits to existing video: change one element while the rest of the frame stays intact, propagate a single edit across an entire multi-shot cut sequence without touching every clip manually, and use a still image mockup as a visual reference to direct the edit rather than describing changes in text. Additional capabilities: swap products for new colorways, change backgrounds for seasonal campaigns, fix lighting, remove distractions, restyle to a different aesthetic. Preview any proposed edit as a still image before committing to video generation — significantly reducing wasted compute credits. Output: 30 seconds at 1080p. Available same-day on all paid Runway plans. Original Gen-4 features include reference-guided character consistency and flexible 2–10 second generation durations.