Sam Altman urges ChatGPT users to slow down as Ghibli-Inspired AI trend goes viral

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has urged ChatGPT users to slow down as the Ghibli-style AI trend continues to dominate social media, overwhelming the company’s servers.

The viral trend, powered by OpenAI’s latest image generator in GPT-4o, has led to an unprecedented surge in image requests, slowing down services. Feeds across platforms have been flooded with AI-generated Ghibli-inspired artwork, reimagining everything from pop culture figures to personal portraits.

In a lighthearted yet urgent post on X, Altman pleaded:
“Can y’all please chill on generating images? This is insane—our team needs sleep.”

The Ghibli-inspired AI art craze reflects the growing popularity of AI-generated creativity, but also highlights the challenges of scaling AI infrastructure under surging demand.

Read more: The internet can’t stop talking about these Ghibli-style memes

The company describes GPT-4o as its “most advanced image generator yet,” offering improved accuracy, better text rendering, and more precise object relationships. Unlike DALL-E, which generates images in a single pass, GPT-4o constructs them step by step for enhanced realism.

A day before announcing the restrictions, Mr Altman joked about the irony of his journey – spending years developing superintelligence, only to wake up to hundreds of messages showcasing AI-generated, Ghibli-style versions of himself.

Embracing the trend, he even updated his profile picture to an AI-crafted Ghibli-style portrait.