OpenAI’s Sam Altman Has Bad News For His Free Ghibli-Style Photo Lovers; What Is It?

Studio Ghibli-inspired portraits have gone viral across social media, with users transforming their everyday photos into dreamy, anime-style illustrations. However, many free-tier ChatGPT users have been encountering errors when attempting to generate these images. If you have been struggling with the same issue, you are not alone.

Earlier today, OpenAI officially paused the ability to generate Ghibli-style images for free users. Now, CEO Sam Altman has announced further restrictions—free-tier ChatGPT users will soon face a daily limit on image generation.

Sam Altman’s Statement on the New Limitations

Sam Altman addressed the issue on X (formerly Twitter), explaining the decision behind the limitations, “It’s super fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT. But our GPUs are melting. We are going to temporarily introduce some rate limits while we work on making it more efficient. Hopefully won’t be long! ChatGPT free tier will get 3 generations per day soon.”

His post clarified that the high demand for AI-generated images has significantly strained OpenAI’s computing resources, requiring the company to impose temporary restrictions.

Why OpenAI is Limiting Image Generation

Since the introduction of GPT-4o’s image-generation feature, OpenAI has witnessed an unprecedented surge in usage. Users have quickly embraced the ability to create artistic visuals, especially Ghibli-style images. However, the surge in demand has overwhelmed OpenAI’s GPU resources, causing widespread processing limitations.

Many free-tier users have already experienced errors while attempting to generate images. Additionally, OpenAI has restricted the ability to modify real human faces into Ghibli-style artwork, allowing only general artistic illustrations instead.

What This Means for Free-Tier Users

As OpenAI works on optimizing efficiency, free-tier users will soon be limited to just three image generations per day. Sam Altman did not specify when the full rollout of the restriction will take effect, but he reassured users that improvements are in progress.

For those who wish to generate more images, the company may encourage upgrades to paid plans, which are likely to offer more image-generation capabilities without the same limitations.

While this limitation may be disappointing for many users, OpenAI’s efforts to balance accessibility and computing power suggest that improvements to the system are on the way. For now, free users will have to make the most of their three daily image generations.