In a series of posts on a social media platform on Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that the growing popularity of the company’s new image-generation tool integrated into ChatGPT would lead to unspecified product delays.
Altman mentioned that although efforts are being made to manage the situation, users can expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, occasional software disruptions, and slower service due to capacity challenges. He assured that the team is working swiftly to resolve these issues.
OpenAI’s latest image generation feature, which can emulate styles like that of Studio Ghibli’s hand-drawn animation, was launched to significant attention and some controversy. Over the weekend, Altman disclosed in social media posts that the company has struggled to meet the demand since the tool’s launch, with employees working late nights and weekends to maintain service.
On Monday, Altman reported that ChatGPT gained one million new users within a single hour. Currently, ChatGPT has 500 million weekly users and 20 million paying subscribers, which is an increase from the 300 million users and 15.5 million subscribers reported at the end of 2024.
To alleviate capacity issues, OpenAI postponed the release of the image generation tool for free ChatGPT users and temporarily disabled video generation for new users of Sora, the company’s suite of generative AI media tools.
