OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has bad news for ChatGPT's free Ghibli-style photo lovers

Ghibli ChatGPT

Studio Ghibli-inspired portraits have taken over the internet, transforming everyday photos into dreamy, anime-style illustrations. But if you’ve been struggling to generate your own Ghibli-style images in ChatGPT and keep encountering an error, you’re not alone.
Earlier today, OpenAI paused Ghibli-style image generation for free users. Now, CEO Sam Altman has shared more bad news—free-tier ChatGPT users will soon face a daily limit on image generation.

Sam Altman’s post

Altman addressed the issue in a recent statement on X (formerly Twitter), saying:

“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.”

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

Why has this limitation been applied

With the introduction of GPT-4o’s image-generation capability, OpenAI has seen an unprecedented rise in usage. Users quickly adopted the feature to create artistic visuals, including Ghibli-inspired images. However, as per the post, the high demand has put significant strain on OpenAI’s GPU resources, leading to processing limitations.

Many free-tier users have already encountered errors when attempting to generate images. ChatGPT also restricts the ability to modify real human faces into Ghibli-style artwork, allowing only general illustrations.

As OpenAI works on optimising efficiency, free-tier users will soon be limited to three image generations per day. Altman has not specified when the full rollout will resume, but he assured users that improvements are in progress.