According to Cointelegraph, OpenAI has temporarily halted new sign-ups for the premium version of its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, ChatGPT Plus, due to a high surge in usage following DevDay. The company's CEO, Sam Altman, announced the decision on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) on November 15, stating that the platform has exceeded its capacity, affecting users' quality of experience. Altman mentioned that ChatGPT Plus has seen a surge in usage since OpenAI's DevDay, where it announced new APIs about a week ago.
Although new registrations are temporarily suspended, users can still check in within the app to be notified when subscriptions reopen. The decision to pause new ChatGPT sign-ups comes after a week where OpenAI services, including ChatGPT and the API, experienced a series of outages related to high-demand and DDoS attacks. The pause should result in fewer issues for developers working on building GPTs and using the API, such as being unable to save GPT drafts. However, it could also lead to a temporary decrease in new users of GPTs since they are only available to Plus subscribers.
ChatGPT is one of the most popular AI chat programs, with over 180 million users, according to SimilarWeb data cited by Reuters. It faces increasing competition from Google's Bard and Anthropic's Claude 2. On November 5, Elon Musk announced that he had created his own AI chat program, 'Grok.' OpenAI has recently expanded its scope by partnering with startup Humane to launch a physical AI device, AI pin, which serves as a wearable AI virtual assistant.