ChatGPT adds 'one million users in an hour' after adding image generation features

OpenAI's Sam Altman boasts of massive user gains after introducing new features

An AI-rendered picture of Sam Altman using Chat GPT.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman is celebrating on social media with the announcement that the company's new image-generation features in ChatGPT helped to add “one million users” in one hour.

Mr Altman's claim comes several days after he said new image features in the company's GPT-4o was so popular that it was melting OpenAI's graphics processing units (GPUs).

“The ChatGPT launch 26 months ago was one of the craziest viral moments I'd ever seen, and we added one million users in five days,” he wrote on X. “We added one million users in the last hour.”

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said ChatGPT's new image generation feature was a huge success.

One of the more popular features of the new image generator is its ability to transform photos to appear as if they were composed in the style of Studio Ghibli, a historic Japanese animation studio.

Those ChatGPT-generated Studio Ghibli photos have flooded various social media platforms with users around the world giving it a try.

Various estimates indicate that ChatGPT has between 250 million and 400 million users. Even the White House posted a Studio Ghibli-type image of a previously deported felon being arrested.

It is not clear what method Mr Altman used to conclude that the platform gained one million new users, but the latest interest in ChatGPT shows that OpenAI is trying hard not to get lost in the AI boom it helped to create.

Although research on artificial intelligence has been continuing since the 1960s, recent advancements in computer processing power, coupled with iterations of AI solutions such as OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022, led to an explosion of interest, investments and start-ups in the tech ecosystem.

Mr Altman's recent celebration comes more than a year after he was briefly removed by OpenAI's board in 2023. The reasons for his removal were vague, but after an outcry from employees and investors, he returned several days later.

“I love you all,” he posted to X shortly after returning to OpenAI in November of 2023. “Today was a weird experience in many ways, but one unexpected one is that it has been sorta like reading your own eulogy while you’re still alive."

Most recently, however, he has had to go toe-to-toe in the legal arena with a former OpenAI collaborator, Tesla and SpaceX tycoon Elon Musk, who has accused Mr Altman of betraying the original mission of OpenAI, among other things.