Free ChatGPT users will have to wait a while longer to be able to use its built-in image generation capability. OpenAI has just launched a feature that will allow users to generate images directly inside of ChatGPT, and it was supposed to roll out to all Plus, Pro, Team and Free users. But according to company CEO Sam Altman, it has been way more popular than OpenAI had expected even though they already had high expectations to begin with. As such, its rollout to the free tier is "unfortunately going to be delayed for a while."
images in chatgpt are wayyyy more popular than we expected (and we had pretty high expectations).
— Sam Altman (@sama) March 26, 2025
rollout to our free tier is unfortunately going to be delayed for awhile.
People have been posting ChatGPT's output all over social media. One popular trend that emerged from the launch is turning existing photos into Studio Ghibli-style illustrations. Even Altman poked fun at it and used a Ghibli-fied photo of himself as his profile picture on X/Twitter. Users have been creating Ghibli versions of everything from personal images to photos of political figures and memes. As VentureBeat has noted, Ghibli creator Hayao Miyazaki likely wouldn't approve of them, seeing as he reacted quite negatively to AI-powered animation years ago, but we doubt that would stop the trend until people get tired of it.
Altman didn't give a timeline for when the feature will make its way to free users. For now, those who want to use the chatbot's built-in generator will have to log into ChatGPT with a Plus, Pro or Team account and then select GPT-4o as their AI model in the lower left-corner.
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