OpenAI pauses new ChatGPT Plus subscriptions as demand soars

Investing.com-- OpenAI has paused new subscriptions for its ChatGPT Plus program, CEO Sam Altman said in a social media post late-Tuesday, citing capacity issues stemming from a massive surge in users after a recent developers conference.

“The surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience,” Altman said in a post on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Users can sign up to be notified when subscriptions are reopened, Altman said.

OpenAI, which is the creator of the wildly popular generative artificial intelligence platforms ChatGPT and DALL-E, unveiled a host of new features for its platforms during its DevDay developers conference earlier in November.

The firm launched GPT-4 Turbo, a new model of its flagship chatbot AI GPT-4, and unveiled the ability to build custom, personalized AIs for specific use cases. OpenAI also said it will open an online store where users can buy and sell GPT–powered bots.

ChatGPT Plus offers subscribers access to the latest models of the AI for a monthly fee. The firm’s decision to pause new subscriptions come after ChatGPT was hit with a series of outages over the past week, which OpenAI said were caused by a spike in users, as well as alleged cyber attacks.

Most of the new features unveiled during the DevDay conference were also only available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers.

OpenAI, which is backed by billions of dollars from tech giant Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), had one year ago unveiled its ChatGPT model to a wildly popular reception. The program was one of the fastest-growing consumer applications, and had over 100 million weekly users as of early-November.

ChatGPT’s release had also triggered a boom in AI development, as other major technology firms raced to come up with their own offerings, most notably Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), and more recently, Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter).