OpenAI has temporarily halted new sign-ups for ChatGPT Plus due to a surge in demand. The premium version of the AI chatbot has seen increased usage after OpenAI's recent developer conference, where new features were announced. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted about the decision, stating that the surge in usage has exceeded their capacity and they want to ensure a great experience for all users. However, users can still sign up to be notified within the app when subscriptions reopen.

The increase in demand has caused server failures, resulting in incomplete answers and network errors. Many users have taken to social media to express their frustrations with the service. Altman's decision to pause new sign-ups may reduce issues for developers but could also mean a temporary decrease in new users of the recently added personalized chatbots.

ChatGPT is one of the most popular AI chatbots with over 180 million users. However, it faces competition from Google's Bard and Anthropic's Claude 2. Elon Musk also recently announced his own AI chat program called "Grok." OpenAI's decision to pause new sign-ups for ChatGPT Plus aims to address the capacity issues and ensure a better user experience.