Thanks to the “Ghibli style” craze—referring to the signature aesthetic of Studio Ghibli, led by director Hayao Miyazaki—images generated using ChatGPT’s new image feature have exceeded 700 million within the first week of its launch.
Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), shared on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday that the first week of the ChatGPT image launch was wild and added, “over 130M users have generated 700M+.”
Lightcap also noted that India is currently the fastest-growing market for ChatGPT and added, “The range of visual creativity has been extremely inspiring.”
He added that they are working hard to serve everyone and thanked users for their patience, saying, “The team continues to work around the clock.”
According to reports from outlets including The Information, ChatGPT’s weekly active users (WAU) reached over 500 million by the end of last month, including 20 million paid subscribers—a roughly 30% increase compared to the 350 million WAU at the end of last year. The number of paid subscribers also grew by 4.5 million during the same period.
In South Korea, ChatGPT’s daily active users (DAU) are also setting new records. DAU jumped from approximately 1.25 million on March 27, when OpenAI released the ChatGPT-4o image generation feature, to 1.4 million on Sunday, 1.98 million on Monday, and 2.55 million on Tuesday—doubling in just five days.
From Sunday onward, DAU has been increasing at a daily rate of approximately 24% to 28%.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, has also embraced the trend, frequently posting Ghibli-style AI-generated images of himself on X.
On March 27, he updated his profile picture to a Ghibli-style portrait with the caption, “Our GPUs are melting down.” By Sunday, he noted, “Can y’all please chill on generating images. This is insane. Our team needs sleep.”