OpenAI has been rapidly doubling ChatGPT’s audience, and the addition of the latest image generation feature has further boosted the AI assistant’s popularity. Today, CEO Sam Altman wrote in X that the service “added a million users in the last hour,” calling it “biblical demand” for image generation.
When the company announced the launch of ChatGPT’s image generation feature last week, it was supposed to be available to all levels of users. However, the high level of interest led to the fact that access for free users was closed. The company is now reporting “problems with new registrations” and has been doing so for more than a day.
While ChatGPT’s ability to create original images has delighted (and sometimes terrified) users, the AI platform continues to draw the ire of artists and creatives. The work of many of these people has been used as training material for a large-scale model ripped off the internet, or illegally taken and modified by ChatGPT users without any attribution or compensation. One of the most prominent examples is the numerous meme images inspired by the animation style of Studio Ghibli. Altman is currently using one of these images as his X profile picture, but other users have used ChatGPT to apply the look of the studio’s films to violent or provocative content, raising a new round of questions about how creators can protect their work from misuse.
