Just this Thursday, Meta officially confirmed a piece of information that shocked Silicon Valley: they are testing a standalone app for their AI video feature Vibes.

If 2024 was the "Year Zero" for text-to-video, then 2026 will be the "Year of Battle" where big players go head-to-head. The goal of Meta's move is clear: to elevate Vibes into a top competitor to OpenAI's Sora.

So what exactly is Vibes?

In short, you can think of it as a TikTok with everyone having a "digital avatar". In Vibes, users can easily create and share short videos using artificial intelligence, and also scroll through a personalized feed filled with all AI-generated content. This video-reading experience may resemble TikTok or Instagram Reels, but the essential difference is that every video on this platform is entirely created by AI.

From "subsidiary" to "independent pioneer," Meta clearly can't wait anymore.

Vibes was actually launched quietly last September, but at the time, it was just a sub-feature within the Meta AI app. This time, Meta decided to give it "independent status," clearly due to the huge pressure from OpenAI. After all, OpenAI's Sora social app entered the market shortly after Vibes was released, grabbing a lot of attention.

Meta's logic is simple: if AI video is the future, it must have the top entry point.

With Meta's strong social DNA, Vibes' advantage lies in its natural "viral spread" environment. While Sora is focusing on the realism of video generation, Zuckerberg has already started thinking about how to keep you scrolling endlessly on AI videos. This "AI version of the short video war" hasn't decided the winner yet, but the fun for users is just beginning.