ChatGPT Down: OpenAI Hit by Global Outage, Thousands of Users Report Errors
ChatGPT Down: OpenAI Hit by Global Outage, Thousands of Users Report Errors
OpenAI’s popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT, experienced a significant global outage on Tuesday, leaving thousands of users unable to access the service and encountering error messages. Reports of disruptions surged, particularly in the United States, India, and the United Kingdom, marking a widespread interruption in the AI tool’s functionality.
According to Down Detector, a platform monitoring online outages, India reported over 800 cases of outages around 3 PM IST. Meanwhile, users in the United States and the United Kingdom collectively filed more than 1,000 complaints regarding problems with ChatGPT’s operation.
The issues began around 12:30 PM IST and escalated rapidly over the subsequent three hours. Users attempting to interact with ChatGPT were met with frustrating messages such as, “A network error occurred. Please check your connection and try again. If this issue persists please contact us through our help center at help.openai.com” and “Hmm…something seems to have gone wrong.”
In India, the majority of affected users (88%) reported problems with the core functionality of ChatGPT, while 9% experienced outages with the mobile application. A smaller segment of 3% also faced issues with the API, as per Down Detector’s data. Similarly, in the US, 93% of users encountered problems with ChatGPT’s primary functions, 7% with the app, and 1% reported API-related issues.
The disruption extended beyond ChatGPT, with OpenAI confirming that its text-to-video platform, Sora, was also experiencing problems. OpenAI acknowledged the incident, stating, “Some users are experiencing elevated error rates and latency across listed services. We are investigating.” However, the company did not provide an estimated timeline for the resolution of the issues.
Social Media Reacts to Outage
The outage quickly became a trending topic on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), where users shared screenshots of error messages and sought confirmation from others about the chatbot’s status. One user posted, “ChatGPT appears to be down right now—getting error messages and slow load times. Checking @OpenAI status reveals an ongoing outage. Who else is affected?” reflecting the collective frustration among the AI community.
