ChatGPT down amid surge in Studio Ghibli image requests on OpenAI platform

OpenAI's ChatGPT is experiencing a global outage, also disrupting users attempting to create Studio Ghibli-styled animated avatars, with widespread errors reported across its app and API services. OpenAI's latest update to ChatGPT has sparked a surge in Studio Ghibli-inspired image creations, with users enthusiastically sharing their artistic outputs across social media.

The upgrade, powered by the new GPT-4o model, allows ChatGPT to generate highly detailed and accurate images, marking a significant leap from its previous DALL-E 3-based capabilities.

'Resolved': Open AI Updates

30 Minutes after Open AI acknowledged that ChatGPT was down, the AI platform informed, “All impacted services have now fully recovered. The detailed Root Cause Analysis (RCA) will be published in the next 5 business days.”

At 4.40 pm on Sunday, 30 March, Open AI officially acknowledged the issue and wrote, “We’re currently experiencing issues”, adding “We have identified that users are experiencing elevated errors for the impacted services. We are working on implementing a mitigation.”.

According to the official statement, the affected component of ChatGPT during the outage is its web platform. “We are investigating the issue for the listed services”, OpenAI shared an update.

According to DownDetector, a website that tracks outages, at least 229 users complained about OpenAI's service disruption. About 59 per cent of users lodged complaints related to ChatGPT.

Studio Ghibli-styled Images on ChatGPT

The introduction of Studio Ghibli-style image generation in ChatGPT has captivated users worldwide, allowing them to transform ordinary photos into enchanting visuals inspired by the iconic Japanese animation studio.

OpenAI released its most advanced image generator through an update on Chat GPT-4o, allowing users to generate images in Miyazaki's hand-drawn animation style that featured in Oscar winning films such as "Spirited Away" and "The Boy and the Heron".

It is to be noted that well-known Japanese Studio Ghibli, and its artist Hayao Miyazaki, creates hand-drawn films like “Spirited Away”, "My Neighbour Totoro", “Howl's Moving Castle”, “Kiki's Delivery Service”, “Princess Mononoke”.

Users can create AI-generated Ghibli-style images. They need to upload their chosen images in the chat and write a text prompt. Anyone can create unique visuals inspired by Studio Ghibli’s style in a short amount of time.

Sam Altman Highlights ‘Biblical Demand’

OpenAI startup CEO Sam Altman had earlier on Sunday posted on X, “Can y'all please chill on generating images this is insane our team needs sleep”.

Replying to another post Altman said, “We just haven’t been able to catch up since launch so people are still working to keep the service up. Biblical demand, i have never seen anything like it.”