'ChatGPT Added 1 Million Users In An Hour': Sam Altman Amid Ghibli Art Frenzy

Last Updated:April 01, 2025, 07:18 IST

Sam Altman revealed that ChatGPT gained one million users in an hour, driven by the viral popularity of its Ghibli-style image generation. He also urged users to slow down.

Sam Altman's Ghibli-style image (Source: X)

As the internet is flooded with ChatGPT’s Ghibli-style images, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the AI platform added one million new users in an hour. Earlier, he had also urged the users to slow down.

In a Monday post on X, Altman wrote, “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." (sic).

“we added one million users in the last hour," he added.

Before that, the CEO had mentioned how the Ghibli-style image generation had taken the platform by a storm and termed it “insane".

“can yall please chill on generating images this is insane our team needs sleep," he mentioned.

ChatGPT’s new feature allows users to generate images in the style of Studio Ghibli, a renowned Japanese animation studio.

This feature quickly gained immense popularity, prompting a surge in user activity as people flocked to experiment with the tool.

On Sunday, ChatGPT was down for several users with its servers overwhelmed by a surge in demand for its new Studio Ghibli-style image generation feature.

However, the developer soon updated saying all impacted services have been “fully recovered".

Reports of the outage began surfacing Saturday evening, leaving several users unable to access the service for a considerable period, but escalated on Sunday around 4 pm, with users flocking to social media to express their frustration.

OpenAI acknowledged the server crash and later updated that services had been restored. It showed that the ChatGPT web was the most affected.

News world 'ChatGPT Added 1 Million Users In An Hour': Sam Altman Amid Ghibli Art Frenzy