Three things happened this week that change what you can put in a brief. One of them has a deadline of Wednesday.
Sora’s API dies on Wednesday
OpenAI removes every Sora model from its API on 24 September — sora-2, sora-2-pro and all the dated snapshots. The consumer app went in April. Developers were told in March, so this is not a surprise. It is a deadline.
What it changes for a brief: if any part of your production chain calls Sora, it stops on Wednesday. There is no successor inside OpenAI, which means every migration path leads to a different vendor — and a different licence. Read the commercial-use terms before the replacement touches a paid campaign, not after. A model that is fine for a moodboard is not automatically cleared for a national spot.
Your agency is about to bill you for tokens
Digiday reported on 17 September that agencies are testing a new line on the invoice: AI token costs billed to clients as materials, separate from human labour. Omnicom’s CFO said the group is building a model to measure those costs and get reimbursed for them. Dept says AI is not yet a double-digit share of its budget.
What it changes for a brief: ask what the tokens actually cost. Generating a fifteen-second product film is a small compute bill. The expensive part is deciding which fifteen seconds — the concept, the direction, the eighty takes nobody sees. When “AI” appears as its own line, ask which of those two you are paying for.
A wipes brand parodied OpenAI’s own ad in four days
Goodwipes released “Asstra”, a spoof of OpenAI’s Astra campaign, built in four days with AI-native agency OK Future. It is part of a pattern this year: brands using AI to make fun of AI rather than to look futuristic.
What it changes for a brief: the four days is the story, not the joke. A brand can now answer a cultural moment inside the week it happens, which used to be impossible at any budget. But speed is a scheduling capability, not a creative one. That spot works because somebody decided what it should say. The tools only made the deadline reachable.
What I’d do this week
Check whether anything you own calls the Sora API, and move it before Wednesday. Then ask your agency, before the 2027 budget conversation starts, how it intends to price AI — as materials, or as craft. The answer tells you what you are actually buying. If you would rather skip that conversation, here is how I work.