OpenAI's ChatGPT is rapidly growing into one of the most widely used online services. Last week, OpenAI reported that 500 million people use ChatGPT every week. The recently released, improved image-generation capability has also gone viral, attracting millions of new users to the platform.
Over 130 million users have already created more than 700 million images using ChatGPT. On Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that ChatGPT gained 1 million users within five days of its launch 26 months ago, whereas the new viral image-generation feature attracted 1 million users in just one hour.
OpenAI is building on this momentum by offering the ChatGPT Plus subscription for free to all full- and part-time students at degree-granting schools in the U.S. and Canada until May. Student status is being verified through SheerID’s secure verification system. Students who already have a ChatGPT Plus subscription will receive a two-month credit.
With a ChatGPT Plus subscription, students receive the following benefits:
- Everything in Free plan
- Extended limits on messaging, file uploads, data analysis, and image generation
- Standard and advanced voice mode with video and screensharing
- Access to deep research and multiple reasoning models (o3‑mini, o3‑mini‑high, and o1)
- Access to a research preview of GPT‑4.5, its largest model yet
- Create and use projects, tasks, and custom GPTs
- Limited access to Sora video generation
- Opportunities to test new features
Right now, OpenAI is struggling to maintain its infrastructure due to growing demand. Sam Altman recently tweeted that users should expect delays in new releases and occasional slow service due to capacity challenges. He even extended an open offer for anyone to provide GPU capacity in 100k chunks.
working as fast we can to really get stuff humming; if anyone has GPU capacity in 100k chunks we can get asap please call!
— Sam Altman (@sama) April 1, 2025
The rapid surge in ChatGPT's popularity highlights the growing demand for advanced AI tools. OpenAI's decision to offer free access to students will further expand its user base.
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