ChatGPT sees record-breaking month following latest rollout and mania over Studio Ghibli-style images
The popularity of both the trend and ChatGPT's latest release is straining OpenAI's resources.
CEO Sam Altman says OpenAI is facing GPU capacity issues, causing delays and service disruptions.
ChatGPT users just can't get enough of Studio Ghibli-style image generations — so much so that the popular trend is helping fuel a record spike in users, and OpenAI is struggling to keep up.
OpenAI rolled out its latest ChatGPT-4o version last week. Users took advantage of the tool's new image generation capabilities to create images in the style of Japanese animation firm Studio Ghibli that look like they were drawn by founder and director Hayao Miyazaki himself.
Social media has been flooded with the AI-animated images, leading OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to join in, updating his X profile photo with a Ghibli-style image of himself, and sharing posts from other users containing the images.
On March 26, just a day after the ChatGPT-4o launch, Altman wrote on X that image generations had already been "wayyyy more popular than we expected (and we had pretty high expectations)." As a result, he said, the free tier of the feature would be delayed, but within days, he announced it had been rolled out to all free users.
"Can yall please chill on generating images this is insane our team needs sleep," Altman wrote on X on Sunday.
The popularity of the Ghibli trend combined with the advanced capabilities of ChapGPT's latest version and the rollout of that version to free users this week has created a perfect storm of conditions to give OpenAI a big boost.
Altman wrote on X on Monday that ChatGPT had just added one million users in the past hour, compared to two years ago, when the newly launched platform added that many users in five days.
During the week of March 24, ChatGPT's weekly app downloads, weekly active users, and revenue from subscriptions and in-app purchases reached an all-time high — increasing 11%, 5%, and 6%, respectively, week-over-week — according to data from market intelligence firm SensorTower.
And compared to the same week last year, app downloads and in-app purchase revenue were up over 500%, according to SensorTower.
In a record-breaking month, ChatGPT visits also reached over 4 billion in the first 28 days of March for the first time, according to market research firm Similarweb.
But all the hooplah around the latest update has been causing problems for OpenAI, according to X posts from Altman over the last few days.
"It's super fun seeing people love images in chatgpt," Altman posted on X on Thursday. "But our GPUs are melting. we are going to temporarily introduce some rate limits while we work on making it more efficient." He followed up by adding that the app will be "refusing some generations that should be allowed" but that, "we are fixing these as fast we can."
Altman said on X that OpenAI is having issues with its GPU capacity.
"We are getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from openai to be delayed, stuff to break, and for service to sometimes be slow as we deal with capacity challenges," Altman wrote on X on Tuesday, adding a callout, "if anyone has GPU capacity in 100k chunks we can get asap please call!"
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. GKIDS, the North American distributor of Studio Ghibli's film library, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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