OpenAI continues to face capacity challenges due to the recently launched viral image generation feature, which has put a strain on the company’s resources.

As a result, OpenAI has temporarily suspended video generation capabilities for new users of Sora, its comprehensive suite of generative AI media tools, starting Monday.

A notice on one of the company’s support pages states, “We’re currently experiencing heavy traffic and have temporarily disabled Sora video generation for new accounts. However, new users can still generate images using Sora.”

The introduction of OpenAI’s image generation capability was met with significant attention and controversy, largely due to its impressive ability to replicate styles similar to Studio Ghibli’s hand-drawn animation. Over the weekend, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X that the company has been struggling to keep up with demand since the launch, with staff working extended hours to maintain the service.

Updated 10:08 a.m. Pacific: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that OpenAI had disabled image generation for certain Sora users, when in fact it was video generation that was disabled. We apologize for the error.