ChatGPT Down as Users Overload AI for Studio Ghibli-Inspired Images

ChatGPT Down as Users Overload AI for Studio Ghibli: This week, in between the glitz and glamour surrounding ChatGPT's fresh image generator, things took a turn on another front: Google released its Gemini 2.5 Pro model for public use, WhatsApp could now be opted as the default calling and messaging application on iPhones, and Instagram has added a fast-forward option for Reels. These five big stories were the highlights of this week's technological news.

1) ChatGPT Down After Studio Ghibli Trend Goes Viral

On a Sunday or so, after Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, had asked users to slow their roll about image creation, ChatGPT ceased operation. A little while before that, OpenAI had loosened constraints on ChatGPT's inbuilt image generation. The newer images coming out of chat are apparent in good quality over their old counterparts, that is, DALL-E.

The social media platforms were seeing users flooding ChatGPT with their real-life images to turn them into Studio-Ghibli style. Following this trend, OpenAI was left with no choice but to throttle image generation for ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers, thus avoiding an overload on its GPUs.

Also Read: Indian Man Takes ₹40 Lakh Loan for US Dream, Now Struggles with Joblessness, Debt & Ailing Family

2) Google rolls out Gemini 2.5 Pro model for all users:

While people went berserk over ChatGPT image generation, Google has been quietly rolling out the latest version of the language model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, to all users. This is a reasoning model similar to OpenAI's o3 Mini or DeepSeek R1; it tries to mimic human-level reasoning prior to answering a query.

The chatbot stands tall in LMArena, the top ranking open-source arena from SkyLab[UC Berkley] where researchers can validate their findings. In another news, it has scored in the range of 18.8% on Humanity's Last Exam as against 14% of OpenAI o3 Mini (High) and 8.6% DeepSeek R1.

Geminin 2.5 Pro works well in reasoning, coding, common math and science tasks, and boasts a high context window of 1 million tokens which approximately translates to 750,000 words-the second-highest after Claude 3.7 Sonnett with 500,000 tokens and o3 Mini with a context window of 200,000 tokens.

3) Grok AI takes center stage amid Studio Ghibli trend:

xAI Grok 3 is currently one of the powerful text-to-image generation models available for free with much less censorship from the company. The alternative for the chatbot started to flourish this week, as users were confronted with a paywall when trying to generate Studio Ghibli-style images on ChatGPT and redirected to convert their images in the popular Japanese anime style.

Also Read: Myanmar & Thailand Earthquakes: China Connection Suspected as Bangkok’s 33-Storey Building Collapses

4) Instagram users can now fast-forward reels:

With a long press on either side of the screen while playing the reels, Instagram now gives users the option to fast-forward their reels by playing at 2x speed. This new feature was rolled out to all Instagram users and is one of many additions to the Meta-owned app coming straight from TikTok.

5) WhatsApp can now be set as default messaging and calling app on iPhones:

This update is the latest by WhatsApp, bringing version 25.8.74 with the option for iPhone clients to choose Meta's app as the default messenger and calling app.

Once WhatsApp has been set as the default messenger/ calling app, the iPhone will directly launch the app whenever users call or send a message, bypassing Apple's own Messages or Phone/FaceTime apps.

Also Read: Myanmar Earthquake Death Toll Rises to 1,700; Rotting Corpses Spread Stench in Mandalay