Technologies

OpenAI’s New Social Media App Will Be All AI Videos, Thanks to New Sora 2 Model

The invite-only social media app will let you put yourself or your friends into AI-generated videos.

OpenAI wants our social media feeds to feature even more AI. Its AI video generator Sora is getting its own social media app, powered by a newly updated version of its AI video model called Sora 2, the company announced Tuesday via livestream.

The app will be a kind of social media platform, where you can follow your friends and share content. However, all of that content will be generated by AI. «It’s not posted by bots, it’s posted by humans, but it’s all AI-generated,» OpenAI’s Thomas Dimson said during the livestream. We’ll have to wait and see if the app does that or if it becomes another social media platform inundated with AI slop.

One of the biggest new features is Cameo, which lets you use your face or someone else’s face and insert it into an AI-generated scene. You can use other people’s likenesses to create videos if they’ve elected to have their cameos made public. You can also create videos with sound, a first for OpenAI and a feature that puts it on par with Google’s Veo 3, which stunned AI enthusiasts this summer. OpenAI said in a blog post that it’s also better at obeying the laws of physics, something AI video generators struggle with, thanks to better reasoning capabilities.

The app is currently only available to iPhone users. Android users will be able to use the new Sora through the web browser, but like iOS users, they’ll need an invite code. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Sora 2 invite codes: How they work

You can download the Sora app now from the Apple App Store. Look for the app that’s made by OpenAI and features a blue and white cloud icon. Though you can download it now, you won’t be able to use it right away.

Sora is an invite-only app, so you’ll need a friend to give you an access code. Each Sora user will be given four invite codes. The app is best enjoyed with friends, OpenAI said during the livestream, which likely explains the more restricted access. An OpenAI spokesperson said the «rollout is starting now» for the initial batch of access codes and that the company will roll it out quickly.

For now, I recommend downloading the app and signing in with your ChatGPT account (or creating a new account, if you don’t have one). Once you’re logged in, you can request to be notified when access codes become available.

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Sora 2 content moderation and safety

A truly usable and enjoyable social media platform relies heavily on the app’s content moderation and safety policies. This is a thorny, complex area, and it’s not something OpenAI has had to deal with before for a true social media app.

The company is starting off with intentionally being «a little conservative with moderation,» per the livestream, which makes sense, as it did the same when it launched its image and video generation models. It also has guardrails in place to prevent people from creating X-rated and graphic content, according to the livestream. We’ll have to see how effective those blockers are once the invite codes start rolling out. AI videos downloaded from Sora will be watermarked, so they should be recognizable as AI when shared on other sites.

AI in social media

This isn’t the first time the idea for an OpenAI-branded social media app has been floated. The Verge reported this spring that CEO Sam Altman was exploring the idea of a social media app, with a more recent report from Wired this week giving us some early insight into what that app, which we now know as the Sora app, might be like.

AI has become a big part of social media. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has flooded its apps with Meta AI, introducing it in search and with AI personas you can chat with via DM. Meta also rebranded its smart glasses app Meta View into the Meta AI app in April, featuring a similar feed of AI-generated content. AI media generation tools like image and video generators have led to an increase in low-quality, useless content referred to as AI slop. Despite OpenAI’s goal to have the Sora app focus on human connection, it seems likely that the feeds will feature a lot of this AI slop.

OpenAI dropped the first version of Sora in 2024, but it hasn’t had any big updates since then. In the meantime, the company has added image generation to its ChatGPT chatbot, which initially took off and started a trend of people using the model to create images of themselves in the iconic cartoon-like style of Studio Ghibli. The trend also amplified the ethical and legal concerns that come with AI media generation.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 5, #970

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 5 #970.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is kind of tough. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Star-spangled signs.

Green group hint: Smash into.

Blue group hint: Not green or red.

Purple group hint: Same surname.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Cultural symbols of the US.

Green group: Collide with.

Blue group: Blue things.

Purple group: Lees of Hollywood.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is cultural symbols of the US. The four answers are American flag, apple pie, bald eagle and baseball.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is collide with. The four answers are bump, butt, knock and ram.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is blue things. The four answers are jeans, lapis lazuli, ocean and sky.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is Lees of Hollywood. The four answers are Ang, Bruce, Christopher and Spike.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 5 #704

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 5, No. 704.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a fun one, once you clue in on the theme. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Quint-essential.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Not four, or six.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

DAYS, GIVE, WOVE, DOVE, LOVE, DOGS, SCONE, STOLE, GEEK, LODE, SIEGE, SLEW, HENS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

TOES, OCEANS, SENSES, VOWELS, BOROUGHS, WEEKDAYS

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is GIVEMEFIVE. To find it, start with the G that’s three letters to the right on the top row, and wind down.

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Technologies

The Motorola Signature Is the Moto Phone I’ve Wanted for Years

Motorola’s new phone is its best flagship yet and could be the Galaxy S26 Plus rival that Samsung didn’t see coming.

At CES 2026, among the AI humanoids, flashy concepts and next-gen foldables, was a Motorola phone that I didn’t expect to be a CES highlight. And no, I’m not talking about theMotorola Razr Fold. While it was the talk of the town (after all, it is the company’s first-ever book-style foldable), there’s a premium smartphone with top specs and a sophisticated design: the Motorola Signature.

Recent high-end Motorola phones have had good-looking hardware, but they don’t compete with the Galaxy S25 Ultras or Pixel 10s of the world. They fall short in one or more areas, including display, performance, cameras, software or battery. The Motorola Signature is the company’s first flagship phone that looks confident enough to take on heavyweights like the upcoming Galaxy S26 Plus and the current iPhone 17, without faltering on either hardware or software.

I’ve been using it for a couple of days now, and this Motorola phone doesn’t have any major downsides, especially for the price. The biggest one could be availability: It won’t be coming to the US, but it is now available for purchase in India at an unbeatable price. It undercuts the OnePlus 15, iPhone 17 and the Pixel 10 by almost $150 or more (directly converted from INR).

With the ever-increasing prices of premium phones, the Motorola Signature is the flagship killer we’ve been waiting for. At about $660 (INR 59,999), it is hard to beat, and I can admit I’m finally excited about a Motorola phone that’s not a Razr.

Motorola Signature is lightweight, slim and rugged

The Motorola Signature has a 6.8-inch 1,264×2,780-pixel resolution AMOLED display with support for a 165Hz refresh rate. It is an LTPO panel, so it can be set to 1Hz for an always-on display (like the iPhone 17 series and Galaxy S25 Ultra), thereby saving battery life. Its resolution might not be as high as the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s, but it is a promising screen for gaming and content consumption.

I couldn’t find a game to test its 165Hz refresh rate, but watching YouTube videos, Instagram Reels and reading ebooks — both indoors and outdoors — was a pleasing experience. The screen remains legible in all lighting conditions.

Motorola’s new phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset and is paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. While it’s not the highest-end chip available (that’d be the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5), it packs plenty of power. I had no issues in day-to-day use, occasional multitasking or gaming. My only complaint was with the camera shutter in low light, but we’ll get to it in a bit.

The Motorola Signature ships with Android 16 with the company’s in-house Hello UI on top. It is a comparatively clean interface with plenty of customization options to fine-tune your experience. One of my favorite features, Moto gestures (twist to open the camera or make a double-chop motion to turn on and off the flashlight) is always handy in unexpected ways.

You get an AI Key on the left side of the phone to trigger Moto AI (uses Perplexity or Microsoft Copilot), but it can only be triggered once you create a Motorola account. You can configure the button to do other shortcuts, like double-press it to take notes and press and hold to trigger Moto AI. But in reality, I didn’t use any of these features in my daily life and would’ve preferred the ability to remap them to a shortcut. Google’s Gemini assistant is also available.

The Signature has a 5,200-mAh silicon-carbon battery and supports 90-watt wired charging and 50-watt wireless charging. Should those speeds hold up, that battery might fill up quickly using either method. It lasted me an entire day on medium use, but on another day, I had to charge it twice when I pushed it with streaming, browsing, Google Maps navigation for 30 minutes and active camera usage. It doesn’t compete with OnePlus 15’s massive 7,300-mAh cell but does well to reduce battery anxiety.

All of this sounds more impressive when you take the Signature’s design into context: The flagship Qualcomm processor’s power, 5,000-mAh plus battery, big AMOLED screen and three 50-megapixel cameras housed in a slim and lightweight design. The new Motorola phone is 6.99mm thick and weighs just 186 grams. For context, the Galaxy S25 Plus, with a smaller battery, measures 7.3mm thick and weighs 190 grams, while most recent big phones weigh 200 grams or more.

I shifted from the iPhone 17 Pro Max and enjoyed using the Motorola Signature because it weighed less. But I didn’t expect it to be so light. The Signature feels good in my hand. I’m glad it doesn’t have sharp flat sides like the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Plus, I love its linen-inspired finish on the back, which sets it apart from the competition. Like its Edge siblings, the Signature is rated IP68 and IP69 for dust and water resistance (meaning it can survive being submerged under a meter of water for 30 minutes and high-pressure water jets), so there’s no fear of dust and water damage.

Improving on the 2 weakest links

Most Motorola phones that I’ve used in recent years, including the $1,300 Razr Ultra have one or two downsides: software support and/or cameras.

The Signature marks a new beginning for the brand as it joins the ranks of Samsung and Google with seven years of Android OS software and security updates. This is on par with Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones and better than what OnePlus offers. I hope this new software update policy is implemented on more Motorola phones launching in 2026.

Secondly, the Motorola Signature (finally!) introduces an impressive camera system. On the back, you get three cameras: a 50-megapixel main camera with OIS, paired with a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with a 3x zoom lens and OIS, and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. This is the first Motorola phone with cameras that I wouldn’t trade for another setup during my vacations.

Photos from the primary and telephoto cameras have better color accuracy than previous Moto shooters. Images have a slightly warmer tone and are saturated — not as much as the OnePlus 15, which delivers much more saturated tones. I prefer Signature’s look in most scenarios.

However, the ultrawide-angle camera retains fewer details, and OnePlus does better in that regard.

The telephoto lens struggles with edge detection in low-light portraits, but I loved using it for architecture shots and capturing scenery around me. It can deliver some stunning shots even in 6x. Mind you, it has 3x optical zoom, but I shot the above photo in 6x, and it has a nice bokeh, good details and an overall pleasing look.

Motorola Signature final thoughts

Overall, the Signature has solid cameras for the price and the best optics yet for a Motorola phone. But there’s one hindrance: The camera shutter in low light is slow to process images. For instance, I wanted to snap a few action shots during a badminton game, but I missed some great smashes because the camera wouldn’t allow me to capture images faster.

The Motorola Signature marks a solid flagship comeback for the brand. It has a big and bright display, a capable processor, a versatile camera setup and good battery life. This phone is hard to fault in its price segment.

The Signature is now available to purchase in India at a starting price of INR 59,999 (approximately $660) for the 256GB variant. It will go on sale in Europe for €999 (approximately $1,170) with 512GB storage in the base version. Motorola has plans to launch its new flagship phone in more countries across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions. However, the Motorola Signature won’t be coming to the US.