OpenAI announced last week that it was rolling out GPT-4o image generation to ChatGPT, before delaying the feature for free users until earlier this week. But in the short time that it was available, the company claims that over 700 million images have been generated using the tool since last week. Or more specifically, since last Tuesday, when the feature was first made available.
The figure comes from Brad Lightcap, who oversees the day-to-day operations and global deployment at OpenAI, via his account on X. He also mentions another statistic, that over 130 million users have contributed to the above figure. There’s also the mention of India being the “fastest growing ChatGPT market”.
very crazy first week for images in chatgpt – over 130M users have generated 700M+ (!) images since last tuesday
India is now our fastest growing chatgpt market 💪🇮🇳
the range of visual creativity has been extremely inspiring
we appreciate your patience as we try to serve…
— Brad Lightcap (@bradlightcap) April 3, 2025
In terms of its sheer popularity, it’s no real surprise, as CEO Sam Altman initially announced the delay of ChatGPT image generation for free users because of OpenAI servers being overloaded with such requests. Though overall the feature did court its own flavour of controversy thanks to the many Studio Ghibli-style images being generated.
Lightcap closes out the post by saying that “we appreciate your patience as wee try to serve everyone, team continues to work around the clock”. Probably something that free users will appreciate more than anyone else considering the limited number of prompts per week.
(Source: Brad Lightcap / X)
