“Our GPUs Are Melting”: OpenAI Imposes Speed Limits Due to Ghibli Craze

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced temporary speed restrictions on image generation in ChatGPT. The issue arose due to the overwhelming demand for anime-style images inspired by Studio Ghibli.

it's super fun seeing people love images in chatgpt.

but our GPUs are melting.

we are going to temporarily introduce some rate limits while we work on making it more efficient. hopefully won't be long!

chatgpt free tier will get 3 generations per day soon.

— Sam Altman (@sama) March 27, 2025

Altman also revealed plans to increase the daily image generation limit for free users from two to three. Previously, users could create up to two images using the DALL-E 3 model.

In March, OpenAI introduced an image generator based on GPT-4o in ChatGPT and Sora. Initially, it was available to all users, but due to overwhelming demand, the company restricted access for non-paying users indefinitely.

Users praised the tool’s high-quality output and began mass-generating images in the style of Studio Ghibli, the legendary Japanese animation studio founded in 1985. Altman himself contributed to the trend by posting an anime-style portrait and changing his profile picture on X.

This craze led to the emergence of several dozen meme coins. The largest, Ghiblification (GHIBLI), peaked at a market capitalization of $42 million. As of writing, it stands at $27 million.

Binance Alpha has listed Ghiblification (GHIBLI) and GhibliCZ (GHIBLI) on its platform. The first token runs on the Solana network, while the second is on the BNB Chain.

In March, Sora’s head of development, Rohan Sahay, expressed the company’s intention to integrate video generation into ChatGPT.

To recall, in March, Sora’s head of development Rohan Sahay announced the company’s desire to integrate a video generator into ChatGPT.