OpenAI has decided to hit the pause button on rolling out its much-anticipated AI image features for free ChatGPT users. CEO Sam Altman shared this update on Wednesday, explaining that the demand for these features was far beyond what the company had initially expected. Altman mentioned, “Images in ChatGPT are wayyyy more popular than we expected (and we had pretty high expectations).”
The announcement came shortly after the launch of GPT-4o’s image generation capabilities, which allow users to upload and modify images with ease. Originally, OpenAI aimed to offer this feature to all ChatGPT users. But for now, only those subscribed to ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Teams can access it.
This isn’t the first time OpenAI has faced challenges during a product launch. The company often points to a lack of computational resources as a stumbling block. For example, after the launch of Sora last December, OpenAI had to pause new signups. However, there’s light at the end of the tunnel with the upcoming $500 billion Stargate data center project, which might just solve these capacity issues.
