OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on Wednesday that the rollout of ChatGPT's viral new AI image features to free users would be delayed, citing significantly higher demand than the company expected. The move comes just a day after the company launched the feature, which allows users to upload and modify images, to its paid subscribers.

In a post on X, Altman revealed that the image generation feature has been "wayyyy more popular than we expected (and we had pretty high expectations)". The feature, which is part of the GPT-4 model, was initially announced to be available to all tiers of ChatGPT users, but as of Wednesday, it has only been rolled out to subscribers of ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Teams.

This is not the first time OpenAI has faced issues with product launches. In recent months, the company has repeatedly blamed a lack of compute capacity for similar hiccups. Shortly after launching Sora in December, OpenAI disabled signups, citing capacity constraints. The company's planned $500 billion Stargate data center project may help alleviate these issues in the future.

The delay in rollout is a significant setback for OpenAI, which has been riding high on the success of ChatGPT. The AI chatbot has been a viral sensation since its launch, with millions of users flocking to the platform to experience its conversational AI capabilities. The addition of image generation features was seen as a major milestone in the development of the platform, and the delay will likely disappoint many users who were eagerly awaiting access to the feature.

Industry experts say that the delay highlights the challenges of scaling AI models to meet high demand. "AI models like ChatGPT require massive amounts of compute power to function, and scaling them to meet sudden spikes in demand can be a significant challenge," said Dr. Rachel Thomas, an AI researcher at the University of California. "It's not surprising that OpenAI is facing capacity constraints, but it's disappointing for users who were looking forward to accessing the image generation feature."

The delay also raises questions about OpenAI's ability to handle the massive demand for its services. The company has been growing rapidly, with millions of users flocking to its platform every month. However, its infrastructure may not be equipped to handle the scale of its user base, leading to issues like the one seen with the image generation feature.

Despite the setback, OpenAI remains committed to rolling out the image generation feature to all users. "We're working hard to get images in ChatGPT to all users as soon as possible," Altman said in his post. The company has not provided a timeline for when the feature will be available to free users, but it is likely to be a priority for the company in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, users will have to wait patiently for access to the image generation feature. The delay may be disappointing, but it's a sign of the massive demand for AI-powered services like ChatGPT. As the technology continues to evolve, companies like OpenAI will need to find ways to scale their infrastructure to meet the growing needs of their users.