DALL-E 2 Drops Its Waitlist: Instant Access for Everyone
OpenAI removed the invite-only waitlist for DALL-E 2, allowing anyone to start using it immediately after signing up. About two months after expanding to an invite-based beta that July, the company moved to a wait-free general release.
Details
- Change in access model: No more waitlist registration or waiting in line โ users could start right after signing up
- Usage stats: At this point, more than 1.5 million users were generating over 2 million images a day, OpenAI reported
- Community size: More than 100,000 users were sharing their work and feedback in the Discord community
- Pricing structure: The system carried over from the invite-only era, granting new users a set number of free credits usable for generating, editing, and creating variations of images
What happened next
Removing the waitlist caused DALL-E 2โs user base to expand rapidly, and AI-generated images became a common sight on social media. In November of that year, an API was also released, letting developers embed DALL-E 2 into their own apps and accelerating its commercial rollout.