OpenAI Sora Starts Extra Paid Credits for $4 as Free AI Access Shrinks

OpenAI’s Latest Move Signals the End of “Free AI” — and the Start of Something Bigger

Free AI might soon be history.

OpenAI just confirmed what many suspected: Sora, its text-to-video AI tool, is going premium. The company has quietly started selling extra Sora credits — 10 additional video generations for $4 — through Apple’s App Store.

Until now, users could generate 30 free videos per day. But according to Bill Peebles, head of Sora at OpenAI, that number is about to drop.

His reasoning? GPUs — or the lack of them.

“Eventually we’ll need to bring the free gens down to accommodate growth,” he posted on X. “We won’t have enough GPUs otherwise.”

That one sentence reveals a lot about where AI creation tools are heading: away from free experimentation and toward paid scalability.

OpenAI’s model is simple — free access attracts users, premium access sustains infrastructure. But the company’s next move might shake the creative world even more.

Peebles hinted that OpenAI will soon let rightsholders license their copyrighted material — whether that’s an artwork, a celebrity likeness, or even a fictional character — directly inside Sora. That means brands, studios, and artists could charge extra for AI-generated cameos using their IP.

Essentially: if you want your favorite superhero, singer, or Pixar-style scene in a video, you might have to pay for it.

And here’s where things get interesting.

OpenAI is being sued by Cameo, the personalized video platform, for trademark infringement. Yet Peebles’ statement suggests the company plans to lean even harder into the cameo concept as a core monetization strategy.

That’s a bold move — one that could redefine how digital likeness, creativity, and intellectual property coexist in the AI era.

Because if OpenAI pulls it off, it could create an AI creator economy where IP becomes the new in-app currency. Artists could license their style, actors could rent out their likeness, and users could bring entire fictional worlds to life — for a price.

But if it fails, it might trigger a massive backlash against paywalled creativity.

There’s also a deeper shift happening behind the scenes.
OpenAI’s monetization play isn’t just about Sora — it’s about survival in the AI gold rush. The cost of running large video-generation models is enormous. And as usage explodes, free credits won’t cut it forever.

We’ve seen this before:

• Google Gemini’s premium tiers.

• Anthropic’s paid Claude Pro.

• Perplexity’s monetized Pro Search.

AI companies are quietly realizing that free doesn’t scale — compute costs do.

So yes, $4 for 10 Sora videos might sound small today. But it’s a preview of the broader pay-to-create era that’s coming fast.

And if OpenAI succeeds in turning copyrighted IP into a marketplace, it could set a global precedent for how AI models and human creativity coexist — profitably.

AI isn’t just generating videos anymore. It’s generating new business models.

The real question is — how long before “AI creativity” feels as expensive as Hollywood production?

Because if GPUs are the new gold, OpenAI just found its first miner’s fee.

The next phase of AI isn’t free. It’s transactional.
And we’re all part of the experiment.