Why ChatGPT's image generator is unavailable for free users
What's the story
OpenAI has delayed the launch of ChatGPT's image generator for its free user base. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted in a recent post that the tool has become unexpectedly popular. He said that "rollout to our free tier is unfortunately going to be delayed for a while." The image generation feature was recently introduced into ChatGPT, allowing users to create high-quality images using text prompts.
Twitter Post
Take a look at Altman's post
images in chatgpt are wayyyy more popular than we expected (and we had pretty high expectations).
— Sam Altman (@sama) March 26, 2025
rollout to our free tier is unfortunately going to be delayed for awhile.
Popularity surge
Image generation feature sparks social media trend
Since its launch, the image generation feature has triggered a social media trend with users sharing photos converted into Studio Ghibli-style images. Even Altman himself has joined the trend. The tool leverages OpenAI's reasoning model, GPT-4o, which is available for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team subscribers at the moment. OpenAI's GPT-4o model provides improved text rendering capabilities. It uses "an autoregressive approach" to create images, i.e., it generates an image from left-to-right and top-to-bottom in a sequential manner.
Delay cause
Feature is likely unavailable due to resource constraints
ChatGPT's image generation feature is currently limited to paid users possibly due to resource constraints and the high computational cost of generating images. OpenAI is seemingly prioritizing offering popular features like image generation to paying users as part of their subscription plans, helping to cover infrastructure expenses while ensuring a smoother experience.