OpenAI Delays Free Access to Image Features

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on Wednesday that the release of ChatGPT’s highly popular new AI image features to free-tier users will be delayed due to overwhelming demand.

images in chatgpt are wayyyy more popular than we expected (and we had pretty high expectations).

rollout to our free tier is unfortunately going to be delayed for awhile.

— Sam Altman (@sama) March 26, 2025

“Images in ChatGPT are far more popular than we anticipated, even with our high expectations,” Altman wrote in a post on X.

The announcement followed Tuesday’s launch of GPT-4o’s native image generation tool, which enables users to upload and edit images.

Read Also: Open AI Introduces Image Generation to ChatGPT

OpenAI had promised the feature would soon be accessible to all ChatGPT users, but for now, it remains exclusive to ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Teams subscribers.

OpenAI has experienced similar setbacks with product launches in recent months, often citing insufficient computing capacity as the cause.

For instance, the company halted signups shortly after releasing its Sora model in December.

It remains to be seen if OpenAI’s $500 billion Stargate data center project will alleviate these capacity issues in the future.

Tech Crunch