ChatGPT, which has been making waves with its image-generation model, has seen its daily user count exceed 1.4 million for the first time.
Today, data from a mobile analytics firm IGAWORKS, showed that as of Sunday, ChatGPT’s daily active users (DAU) in South Korea reached an all-time high record of 1,404,799.
This marks a significant increase from 1,033,733 users on March 10, when it first crossed the million-user threshold. The platform set another record with 1,252,925 users on March 27, only to break it again three days later. ChatGPT’s DAU was just 524,187 on January 1 this year.
Experts attribute this user surge to OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT-4o Image Generation, a new AI model launched on March 25. The model’s debut sparked a global trend, with users creating and sharing images mimicking popular animation styles like Disney and The Simpsons across social media platforms.
The Studio Ghibli aesthetic, known for classics like Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away, has become a fan favorite.
Even Samuel H. Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, joined the trend by updating his X (formerly Twitter) profile picture with a Ghibli-style image. This new model combines OpenAI’s multimodal AI ChatGPT-4o with image-generation capabilities, intuitively creating images based on user intent without requiring step-by-step commands. The phenomenon has gone viral, with users across South Korean online communities and KakaoTalk profiles showcasing their Ghibli-style self-portraits.
However, this rapid adoption has not been without its challenges.
The surge in image generation requests led Altman to voice concerns about technical issues, noting that the Graphics Processing Units (GPU) are “melting”. There’s growing concern about potential copyright infringement related to specific art styles and the risk of generating offensive content.
