OpenAI Faces Major Outage Amid Surge In Studio Ghibli Image Requests

 

 

 

OpenAI’s ChatGPT experienced a major outage across India and several other regions, leaving thousands of users unable to access the AI-powered chatbot. The disruption, which began around 6:30 PM as reported by Downdetector, was likely triggered by an overwhelming surge in demand for Studio Ghibli-style image generation. Users flocked to OpenAI’s DALL·E to create Ghibli-inspired digital art, contributing to a significant spike in traffic.

According to Downdetector, nearly 18,000 outage reports were filed, with ChatGPT suffering 95% of reported issues, while DALL·E and Sora experienced 3% and 2% disruptions, respectively. Many users took to social media to express their frustration, sharing memes and discussing the impact of OpenAI’s outage on AI-generated art trends.

Recently, amidst the frenzy of Ghibli, a post on X (previously known as Twitter) from Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, wrote, “Y'all are not ready for images v2...” This was a post hinting at some new features coming to the image-generating tool. 

 

Post this outage, one user on X wrote, "ChatGPT appears to be down. They are really struggling with infra since the new image model dropped. They might have bitten off more than they can chew."

The incident has raised concerns about OpenAI’s ability to scale its infrastructure as demand for generative AI tools continues to rise. CEO Sam Altman, who recently teased upcoming updates for Ghibli-style images, acknowledged the challenges and assured users that the company is working to address capacity issues.

This outage also highlights the growing global fascination with AI-powered image generation and the need for robust cloud infrastructure to support emerging digital art trends in 2025.