ChatGPT Plus Sign-Ups on Hold as OpenAI Struggles to Meet Overwhelming Demand

OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company, has temporarily halted new registrations for its premium service, ChatGPT Plus, due to overwhelming demand that exceeded the company's capacity.

The surge in demand followed OpenAI's inaugural DevDay, adding another layer of complexity to a challenging week since the extensive release of new features, according to Gizmodo.

OpenAI Overwhelmed by Usage Surge

CEO Sam Altman conveyed the decision to pause ChatGPT Plus sign-ups through a tweet, stating, "We are pausing new ChatGPT Plus sign-ups for a bit. The surge in usage post-DevDay has exceeded our capacity, and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience."

DevDay, OpenAI's first developer conference held a week ago, aimed to instill confidence in developers regarding the platform's potential. A significant part of the conference involved the release of GPTs, customizable chatbots designed for developers on an accessible consumer interface. However, these GPTs are currently restricted to premium users, and Altman mentioned that the audience cap was implemented as of Tuesday.

The broader release of GPTs is expected by the end of November with the introduction of the GPT Store, although the timeline now appears uncertain due to the recent challenges faced by OpenAI. The GPT Store will allow users to exchange GPTs and receive money depending on user numbers.

The company's developer interface, the OpenAI API, experienced partial outages on Wednesday morning, marking the fourth outage since DevDay. Altman attributed the incident to increased usage, although, as earlier reported by TechTimes, a coordinated attack on OpenAI's servers occurred last week.

The server issues not only pose challenges for OpenAI but also impact developers relying on the platform. The matter becomes especially crucial as OpenAI's servers anticipate a significant influx in the coming weeks, coinciding with the GPT Store's aim to attract everyday users with user-friendly chatbots.

Other Challenges for OpenAI

In another development reported by Mint, OpenAI announced the introduction of GPT-4 Turbo, an upgraded version surpassing the capabilities of the previous GPT-4. This new language model allows ChatGPT users to build customized bots for specific tasks, offering more powerful models for developers at reduced costs. GPT-4 Turbo's input tokens are $0.01 (three times cheaper) and output tokens are $0.03 (two times cheaper), making it cheaper for developers.

Despite these advancements, the temporary halt in ChatGPT Plus sign-ups has led to a notable trend on eBay, where some individuals are selling shared access to their ChatGPT Plus accounts, reflecting the high demand for ChatGPT's capabilities and revealing OpenAI's challenge in meeting the overwhelming interest.

In addition, recent reports suggest that OpenAI is facing difficulties obtaining powerful Nvidia GPUs and is collaborating with Microsoft to develop in-house AI chips, reducing reliance on Nvidia.