‘India Is Outpacing the World’: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Lauds India’s AI Adoption

OpenAI chief Sam Altman is amazed by India’s rapid AI adoption, piggybacking on the wave of the Studio Ghibli art trend that lets anyone convert their photos into Hayao Miyazaki’s adorable anime style.

“What’s happening with AI adoption in India right now is amazing to watch,” Altman wrote on X (formerly Twitter), citing the spike in image generations on ChatGPT. “We love to see the explosion of creativity – India is outpacing the world.”

How it started

OpenAI’s announcement on the integration of GPT-4o’s image generation capabilities into ChatGPT sent the internet into a frenzy. ChatGPT’s new capabilities include reimagining photos into different styles, but Studio Ghibli stood out, largely because they have more appeal over other animation styles. Unlike Miyazaki’s style of turning images into animation, ChatGPT takes minutes to copy that style. While the jury is still out on the morality and ethicality of this new trend of initiating art styles, users are having a field day creating Studio Ghibli versions of their favourite photos. It was initially available to paid users, but the launch of the feature to the free tier increased the trend’s virality.

GPUs melting

A small fun activity turned into a global phenomenon shortly, seeing participation from celebrities, governments, and key people across industries. Even Altman and Elon Musk could not escape the trend. But, like everything, this trend had a downside: strain on the company’s servers.

According to Altman, the GPUs (graphics processing units) were struggling to meet the demand to generate AI images. “It’s super fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT. But our GPUs are melting,” he posted on X last month. To curb the onslaught of requests (and enthusiasm in people), OpenAI introduced rate limits on AI generations. “We are going to temporarily introduce some rate limits while we work on making it more efficient.” OpenAI limited 3 AI generations per free user per day, while the paid users had higher limits.

And when even the rate limits did not change anything significantly, Altman asked “y’all” to “please chill on generating images,” as ChatGPT added one million users in five days — its highest spike in customer base by far.

But after OpenAI increased the capacity of its GPUs, as promised by Altman, it announced that image generation for “all free users.”

Love for India?

Before Wednesday’s remark, Altman had reshared Studio Ghibli versions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and with him other key people such as Donald Trump. These photos were posted by MyGov’s official X account. Altman also reshared India Post’s images of postal workers in Studio Ghibli style.

Read more: ChatGPT's Studio Ghibli Photos Are Cool For Internet, But Not For Environment