ChatGPT Faces Outage Amid Surge in Studio Ghibli-Style Image Requests

Many users found ChatGPT down on Sunday after a popular new AI fad began to sweep through social media, allowing people to create Studio Ghibli images. This led to widespread reports of app and API errors.

DownDetector, which tracks outages, reported that at least 294 users complained about OpenAI service disruptions, with 53% of problems reportedly aligning with ChatGPT. Open AI officially acknowledged the issue and wrote, "We’re currently experiencing issues."

About 30 additional minutes later, OpenAI stated that all ChatGPT services were fully recovered, while the component affected during the outage was the web platform of ChatGPT.

Studio Ghibli Frenzy Takes Over Social Media

With this update, OpenAI has released the most advanced image generator in ChatGPT-4o, where users can convert any image of their choosing into Studio Ghibli style, an iconic hand-drawn animation design by Hayao Miyazaki, winning an Oscar award. Celebrities and politicians alike are sharing their cartoon style hand-drawn images, and Indian politicians have joined this fashion of sharing animated avatars.

GPT-4o is the most accurate in terms of photorealism but is especially noted for simulating the soft, dreamlike qualities of Ghibli's style. The users can access it through ChatGPT by clicking the three dots on the prompt bar. One can see the Image and Canvas options in the opened drawer.

‘Team Needs Sleep’: Sam Altman

According to CEO Sam Altman, ChatGPT's GPUs have "melted" from the usage so far brought about by unknown conditions surrounding the successful new update. OpenAI would therefore put a temporary cap on the number of images that users can generate, with free users only being allowed up to three images.

As the craze continued, Altman said the response to the feature of the AI chatbot is “insane" and is leaving his teams with no time to rest 🔗. “Can yall please chill on generating images this is insane our team needs sleep (sic)," Sam Altman wrote on X.

The comment about handling high loads prompted Altman to express his astonishment; he had never seen anything like this kind of response. "We just haven't been able to catch up since the launch so people are still working to keep the service up... biblical demand, I have never seen anything like it," he stated.

Since its rollout, users have voiced their appreciation for the feature on Twitter-with-X, Instagram, and TikTok, flooding the platforms with their AI-generated Ghibli-wanna-be art, and thereby producing trending hashtags associated with #Ghiblified or #GhibliArt with regular users, politicians, influencers, celebrities, and brands alike will get their hands on these tools.

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