As Ghibli frenzy rocks internet, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman teases version 2

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has now teased Ghibli users with a version 2 of the feature, which he feels people are not ready for. Altman posted on X on Wednesday, “y’all are not ready for images v2…”

His latest post hinted at even more advanced features after a week of overwhelming demand for a new image-generating update.

‘Frenzy over Ghibli-style images’

Studio Ghibli-style images triggered a viral trend last week. Users from across the globe flooded social media with images based on the hand-drawn style of the famed Japanese animation outfit, Studio Ghibli, founded by renowned director Hayao Miyazaki and known for movies such as “Spirited Away” and “My Neighbor Totoro”.

The frenzy to create Ghibli-style AI art using ChatGPT’s image-generation tool led to a record surge in users for OpenAI’s chatbot last week.

“We added one million users in the last hour,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an X post on Monday, comparing it with the addition of one million users in five days following ChatGPT’s red-hot launch more than two years ago.

Active users, in-app subscription revenue and app downloads reached an all-time high last week, according to SensorTower data, after the AI company launched updates to its GPT-4o model, enabling advanced image generation capabilities.

Global app downloads and weekly active users on the ChatGPT app grew 11% and 5%, respectively, from the prior week, while in-app purchase revenue increased 6%, the market intelligence firm said.

‘Strained OpenAI’s servers

The surge reportedly strained OpenAI’s servers and temporarily limited the feature’s usage. Sam Altman earlier asked users to ‘chill out’ as the demand for ChatGPT’s new update is putting a strain on his team.

“Can yall please chill on generating images this is insane our team needs sleep,” Altman wrote in a post on X.

In reply to another post, Altman delved into the toll the new ChatGPT update has taken on his company. He wrote, “We just haven’t been able to catch up since launch so people are still working to keep the service up. biblical demand, i have never seen anything like it.”

‘Unspecified product delays’

The surge in demand prompted Altman to warn users of slower service and potential disruptions as OpenAI scrambles to address capacity challenges.

“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.

He said the team is “working as fast we can to really get stuff humming,” even appealing for additional GPU capacity in a follow-up post: “If anyone has GPU capacity in 100k chunks we can get asap please call!”