'Can y'all please chill': Sam Altman urges users to slow down as Studio Ghibli AI demand goes crazy

In recent days, social media platforms have been inundated with a new trend where users generate images reminiscent of Studio Ghibli's signature style using OpenAI's ChatGPT. This surge in activity has been so overwhelming that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took to X (formerly Twitter) to urge users to slow down, humorously asking "can y'all please chill" and that his team "needs sleep."

OpenAI had rolled out the native image generation feature to all ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Team users worldwide on 26 March. The trend involves users inputting prompts into ChatGPT's latest image generator, powered by the GPT-4o model, to create visuals that emulate the whimsical and ethereal aesthetics characteristic of Studio Ghibli films. These AI-generated images have flooded social media feeds, captivating audiences with their dreamlike quality and sparking widespread engagement.​

The phenomenon gained momentum rapidly, with users from around the globe participating and sharing their creations. However, the unexpected volume of activity led to increased server loads at OpenAI, resulting in slower service and prompting Altman's public appeal for moderation.

Responding to a comment by an English-American computer scientist about whether a high server load requires more people to be awake, the CEO admitted that the demand for ChatGPT’s image generation has been unprecedented.

“We just haven’t been able to catch up since launch, so people are still working to keep the service running,” Altman said, calling the surge in usage “biblical demand” and emphasising that he had never seen anything like it before.

On a previous social media post, Altman recently acknowledged the strain on ChatGPT's servers due to the overwhelming demand for its image-generation feature. Earlier this week, he admitted that server load was "too high," prompting the company to limit access temporarily.

"It's super fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT. But our GPUs are melting," Altman posted on X (formerly Twitter). He added that OpenAI would introduce temporary rate limits while working on making the system more efficient. "Hopefully won't be long," he assured users.

Despite the restrictions, Altman confirmed that free-tier ChatGPT users would soon get access to image generation, albeit with a cap of three generations per day. The update is expected to roll out shortly as OpenAI fine-tunes its infrastructure to handle the surge in demand.