In a surprising turn of events, OpenAI is now seeing massive growth for ChatGPT’s operations after recent changes occurred, and the platform has reported seeing one million users join in only an hour.
The rapid growth of ChatGPT has been taking place, particularly as the company recently launched the AI image generation feature on the chatbot platform.
OpenAI Celebrates ChatGPT’s Milestone: 1M Users in 1 Hour
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has shared a new post via X which details the latest milestone that the company is currently celebrating for ChatGPT, particularly as the chatbot platform saw one million users sign up in only an hour.
In comparison, Altman said that in the first launch of ChatGPT over two years ago, the company saw one million users sign up in five days.
The previous record that it saw was already the “one of the craziest viral moments” that the executive saw in his career, but that has been trumped by its latest milestone, particularly after its most recent feature drop that involves image creation.
the chatgpt launch 26 months ago was one of the craziest viral moments i'd ever seen, and we added one million users in five days.
we added one million users in the last hour.
— Sam Altman (@sama) March 31, 2025
In a reply, Altman said that OpenAI is still not able to catch up from the demand from the public since the new feature launched. Furthermore, the CEO claimed that OpenAI employees are still working nonstop to keep the service running.
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ChatGPT’s AI Image Generation Capabilities Help Growth
The “biblical demand” that Sam Altman is talking about centers on the latest ChatGPT feature, which allow users to create AI-generated images directly from their prompts. This is the most recent addition to ChatGPT that allows users to natively take advantage of the feature without needing to use DALL-E.
With this feature alone, OpenAI is now unlocking new milestones for ChatGPT, with Altman saying that he has never seen anything like this before.
OpenAI and ChatGPT’s Latest Features
After keeping ChatGPT and DALL-E separate for a long time, the company has decided that it is time to fuse its features to deliver AI image generation for the chatbot platform natively. The company made it available for free, and initially, they did not have usage limits on the feature, which allowed many to take advantage of this tool as much as they wanted to.
Several weeks prior to the release of this new feature, OpenAI has also announced GPT-4.5, the upcoming large language model of the company, and touted it to be the largest update coming. According to OpenAI, this will power different platforms to offer better emotional intelligence and deeper knowledge in various topics, leveraging a more “natural” experience for users.
With the recent announcements from OpenAI, the future sounds promising for the company and there is no way but up for them as evidenced by the latest feature for ChatGPT. Because of the massive demand, OpenAI had to limit ChatGPT’s AI image generation tool, particularly as its machines are already overheating and causing components to melt.
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