ChatGPT user numbers break records after launch of viral feature

The viral trend has seen users from all over the world flooding social media with images created based on the signature hand-drawn style of Studio Ghibli - the famous Japanese animation studio founded by renowned director Hayao Miyazaki, known for films such as "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro".

The craze for creating Ghibli-style AI art using ChatGPT's image-generating tool has sent OpenAI's chatbot user base to a record high this past week.

The number of average weekly active users surpassed 150 million for the first time this year, according to data from market research firm Similarweb.

“We added 1 million users in the last hour alone,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared in an X post on Monday, comparing that to the 1 million users added in five days after ChatGPT’s impressive launch more than two years ago.

Data from SensorTower shows that active users, in-app subscription revenue, and app downloads hit all-time highs this past week, after the AI ​​company released an update to its GPT-4o model that opens up advanced image generation capabilities.

Ghibli, or Studio Ghibli, is a famous Japanese animation studio, founded in 1985 by legendary director Hayao Miyazaki and his colleagues. Works such as Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, or Howl's Moving Castle have made Ghibli famous worldwide thanks to its meticulous hand-drawn style, emotional plots, and distinctive colors. Ghibli's style is often associated with majestic natural landscapes, vivid characters, and a bit of fantasy, making viewers feel like they are lost in another world.

These days, thanks to AI, you don’t have to be an artist to create Ghibli art. Tools like ChatGPT, Grok (developed by xAI), and Gemini (from Google) have opened the door for anyone to try their hand at the art. Whether you want to turn a selfie, a pet, or an everyday moment into a Ghibli painting.

Global app downloads and weekly active users on ChatGPT increased 11% and 5%, respectively, from the previous week, while revenue from in-app purchases increased 6%, according to the market analysis firm.

“It’s great to see people loving the images on ChatGPT. But our GPUs are overloaded,” Altman said last week in response to the viral trend.

However, the widespread use of AI tools to create Ghibli effects has also raised questions about potential copyright infringement.

“The legal landscape of AI-generated images that mimic Studio Ghibli’s signature style is a gray area. Copyright law typically protects specific expressions rather than the artistic style itself,” said Evan Brown, a partner at law firm Neal & McDevitt.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the data used to train its AI models or the legality surrounding this latest feature.

Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki's comments about AI-generated imagery from 2016 were echoed after the trend exploded last week. "I don't like that kind of effect. I never want to incorporate this technology into my work at all," Miyazaki said after being shown an early AI-generated render.

OpenAI is planning to release its first open-weight language model with inference capabilities since GPT-2, CEO Sam Altman revealed. An open-weight model is a type of model whose training parameters (weights) are made public, allowing developers to analyze and fine-tune the model for specific tasks without needing access to the original training data. This is different from open-source models, which provide the entire source code, training data, and development methods.

OpenAI will host developer meetings to discuss how to make open-weight language models more useful, Altman said. The first event will take place in San Francisco in the coming weeks, followed by meetups in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Source: https://www.baogiaothong.vn/luong-nguoi-dung-chatgpt-pha-ky-luc-sau-khi-ra-mat-tinh-nang-gay-sot-192250401231626414.htm