ChatGPT’s Ghibli Memes Delayed OpenAI’s Product Launch Schedule

Okay, so here’s the thing. Over these past few years, watching OpenAI roll out its new AI stuff has been kinda like… I dunno, witnessing history in the making? Especially with all the buzz whenever ChatGPT gets an update or whatever. Their latest biggie is GPT-4o, this crazy image generator that’s had the internet lit with Ghibli memes everywhere. Like, seriously, they’re all over the place.

But, hey, with all this hype, you have to expect a few bumps, right? Like, they had to slow down the rollout for the free version. ‘Cause, according to Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO, the excitement nearly fried their GPUs. Can you believe that? They even had to put some limits in place just to catch a break. Poor guys just needed a nap, I guess.

And then bam! All this craziness made ChatGPT snag an extra million users in, like, an hour. Insane, right? It’s probably ’cause the images look way more real than what DALL-E 3 can do, if you’re into that kinda thing.

Now, Altman hinted at doing some wild stuff to handle this Ghibli mania. Didn’t go into all the gory details, but during a convo with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, he let slip a bit about Stargate and, oddly enough, robots. What a combo.

He called these viral moments “unusual.” No kidding, Sam. “I’ve seen viral moments,” he says, “but never this level of craziness.” So, apparently, crafting these images takes a ton of computing power. Which meant OpenAI had to get creative with resources.

Borrowing compute power from other parts of the company and slowing down new features were part of the game plan. Altman mentioned something like, “It’s not like we have mountains of GPUs just chillin’ about.” They clearly weren’t sitting pretty with extra gears to spare, hence the restrictions and delayed stuff for free users. Sigh, tech world problems, am I right?