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ChatGPT subscribers are getting frustrated with Sora restrictions and OpenAI outages – and I can't blame them
OpenAI's capacity issues are continuing to throttle ChatGPT's features and performance for paying subscribers –and that's starting to wear thin.
- OpenAI Sora's video generation is still unavailable for new accounts
- The restrictions follow a week of regular outages affecting all ChatGPT users
- OpenAI says it's currently "experiencing heavy traffic"
ChatGPT is having both a great and terrible start to the month, depending on who you ask. While OpenAI is excited about the popularity of new features like its new native image generation, ChatGPT Plus subscribers are growing increasingly frustrated with the restrictions and patchy performance caused by the chatbot's new wave of popularity – and I'm among them.
Last week, ChatGPT had one its worst periods for outages. While they were mostly short-lived issues, the consistent problems (usually starting at 9am ET / 2pm BST) led to some understandable grumbling from subscribers who saw the gates to ChatGPT's new native image generation flung open to hordes of free users.
As I type, OpenAI's status page again says the company is "experiencing issues" and Downdetector is showing small spikes in reports – though nothing on the scale of last week, fortunately.
The sheer scale of last week's surge was revealed by OpenAI's COO Brad Lightcap on X (formerly Twitter), who said that "over 130m users have generated 700m+ (!) images since last Tuesday".
He added that "we appreciate your patience as we try to serve everyone", which was a slightly more sympathetic take compared to CEO Sam Altman's more matter-of-fact statement that "you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to break, and for service to sometimes be slow as we deal with capacity challenges". In other words, deal with it because we're putting our foot on the gas.
very crazy first week for images in chatgpt - over 130M users have generated 700M+ (!) images since last tuesdayIndia is now our fastest growing chatgpt market
