OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently announced a delay in the release of ChatGPT’s new AI image feature for free users. The delay was attributed to a much higher demand than anticipated by the company.
**High Demand for Image Feature**
Altman stated that the popularity of images in ChatGPT far exceeded their expectations, even though they had set high expectations for the feature.
**Rollout to Subscribers Only**
Despite announcing the launch of GPT-4o’s image generation feature for all ChatGPT tiers, OpenAI has so far only made it available to subscribers of ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Teams.
**Challenges with Product Launches**
OpenAI has encountered challenges with product launches in recent months, often due to limitations in compute capacity. Following the launch of Sora in December, OpenAI had to disable signups. The upcoming Stargate data center project, with a planned budget of $500 billion, may help address these capacity constraints.
