OpenAI has announced a delay in the release of the ChatGPT image generation feature for free users. In a message posted on Wednesday, CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that the demand for the image-generation tool has exceeded expectations, stating that “the rollout to our free tier is unfortunately going to be delayed for awhile.”
The image generation capability was integrated into ChatGPT just the day before, enabling users to produce images directly within the application using OpenAI’s GPT-4o reasoning model. Since the feature went live, social media has seen a surge of transformed photos, with users sharing creations in various styles, including those reminiscent of Studio Ghibli—a trend that has even attracted Altman’s participation.
The GPT-4o model promises enhancements in text rendering and employs an “autoregressive approach” for image generation, which processes images from left to right and top to bottom instead of generating the entire image simultaneously. While this feature is currently accessible to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team subscribers, there is no specific timeline for its availability to free users.