Urgent pending data loss, Sora 1, all other support channels broken

Resolved 💬 5 comments Opened Mar 14, 2026 by jamespharvey20 Closed Mar 23, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

I know this is the wrong forum. I beg you to read this and escalate to the right OpenAI team because: all other support channels are broken; and this affects many other users. What else am I supposed to do but post here?

  1. OpenAI is about to delete customers' Sora 1 data.
  1. Sora 1 website taken offline.
  • It's giving a 404 error, so customers can no longer go there to manually download their content.
  1. OpenAI didn't proactively notify customers in advance.
  • Although OpenAI posted a help article, it does not appear to have emailed customers about this. I'm not sure how customers were supposed to find this on their own in the past 2 weeks. Maybe using Sora 1 gave a notification, but I haven't used it lately.
  1. Data export requests are failing for many users.
  • The help article above says to file a data export request.
  • I periodically file data export requests. I happened to file one on February 25. I received a "Your data export has started" email, but never got a download link. I filed another on March 2, again receiving a "started" email, but no download link. I filed another and a privacy center request today.
  • Other customers are complaining they haven't been receiving download links for their data export requests either.
  1. Exports never had Sora 1 content in the past.
  • My and other customers data requests have never included Sora 1 content in the past. (Exception: Some Sora 1 images that were made through chatgpt.com rather than the Sora website.)
  1. help.openai.com tickets aren't working.
  • I tried submitting a help ticket, but after the chatbot says to just try a data export and to let it know if it wasn't helpful, I ask for it to be sent to a human and it stops responding.
  1. OpenAI Data Subject Access Request email appears non-functional- I emailed dsar@openai.com, and got an automated email asking me to file a data export request.
  • It says if this isn't helpful to reply, but it's from noreply@openai.com!
  1. OpenAI hasn't said exactly when it's deleting customer data.
  • I filed a privacy center data request, but cannot wait and see if I get my data or if it's deleted first.

OpenAI's export paths appear broken at the exact moment OpenAI is threatening permanent data loss. I know this is off-topic, but I ask that you internally alert the right team, and hopefully they issue some kind of follow-up announcement. I'm sure many other customers are panicking right now.

View original on GitHub ↗

5 Comments

jamespharvey20 · 5 months ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1rro48t/soras_download_export_does_nothing/

  • User says they got their export, and no Sora files were in it. They claim to have over 10,000 files that OpenAI is about to delete. (Someone making 200 images/day on pro can easily hit this.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/SoraAi/comments/1rsz5j2/sora_1_is_officially_gone/

  • Leather-Bake3856 also says they got the export, but it doesn't have the Sora 1 files.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1rj5k72/data_exports/

  • Thread about data exports not working for people

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1rojchy/i_followed_the_instructions_to_export_my_sora_1/

  • Bunch of users saying that they were able to get the export, but it did not have the Sora 1 data.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTcomplaints/comments/1rdhsx4/data_export_issues/

  • Other users saying waiting weeks and not getting exports.
etraut-openai contributor · 5 months ago

This isn't the right forum for sora bug reports.

nlbdotdev · 4 months ago

So what is appropriate platform?

QINGCHARLES · 3 months ago

How do we export our Sora 1 images? It is a legal requirement that OpenAI provide an ability to export them.

darlingm contributor · 3 months ago
How do we export our Sora 1 images? It is a legal requirement that OpenAI provide an ability to export them.

As far as I can tell, we can't and they're either gone or will be gone soon. I'd love to be wrong, but the silence has been deafening, and has permanently altered what used to be my rock solid opinion of OpenAI. I've gotten several high enough up OpenAI employees' eyes on this matter here and in Twitter DMs, and although I won't try to say what any of the individual employees feelings are, OpenAI as a whole apparently does not care and is showing no signs of doing so in the future. Not your bitcoin keys, not your bitcoin == if your AI data isn't on a machine you control, it's not your data. Hard lesson to learn. OpenAI, I still say this with love. 🤷 And this issue will probably be locked now. 🤷