OpenAI has had to pause new sign-ups of its landmark ChatGPT large-language model after a surge in usage exceeded the platform’s capacity on Tuesday evening.
The pause comes a week after OpenAI’s first DevDay, when a raft of new ChatGPT features was announced.
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.
you can still sign-up to be notified within the app when subs reopen.
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 15, 2023
Among the latest innovations was the new GPT-4 Turbo model, which has knowledge of world events up to April 2023. When ChatGPT took flight earlier this year, its knowledgebase was cut off at September 2021.
GPT-4 Turbo can also process up to 300 pages of text into a single prompt, exponentially more than the variable word limit that previously hobbled the platform.
OpenAI also announced the integration of AI-based image generator DALL·E 3 into GPT-4 and text-to-speech protocols into developers’ API calls.
At the DevDay conference, OpenAI announced that approximately 100 million individuals utilise its services weekly, and over 90% of Fortune 500 companies are developing tools using OpenAI's platform.
These innovations, however, have seemingly overwhelmed OpenAI’s servers, causing an ongoing pause in new sign-ups.