- Signups for ChatGPT hit 1 million in an hour on Monday. This follows the launch of a new image-generation feature that simulates the artwork of Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki has been outspoken in his disdain for AI-generated art.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says it took five days for ChatGPT to reach 1 million users, a number that seemed insanely fast a little more than two years ago. On Monday, when the company launched the latest iteration of its chatbot, it collected another 1 million users in just 60 minutes.
Signups for the chatbot, which added an image generation feature last week, were coming so fast and furious on Monday that at one point, the system was having trouble keeping up with what Altman called “biblical demand.”
The site is now operating normally.
ChatGPT last week announced that its AI image-generation tool would be available to all users at all tiers, but the surge of signups forced the company to walk back that access temporarily. Altman, at one point, posted a tongue-in-cheek social media plea asking people to ease up on usage: “can yall please chill on generating images this is insane our team needs sleep.”
The big draw, it appears, is a filter that allows people to create animations in the style of Studio Ghibli, which uses Hayao Miyazaki’s animation methods, best reflected in the films My Neighbor Totoro or Spirited Away.
While popular, the artist the chatbot is imitating is far from a fan of the homage. In a 2016 documentary, Miyazaki called AI “an insult to life itself” and said, “I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all.”
The launch of this image generator has once again raised the debate about AI’s use of artists’ work without their permission. Many artists, authors, and other creative types have accused OpenAI and other companies of training large language models on their work without getting consent or providing any form of compensation.