The AI-integrated chatbot software ChatGPT has encountered a global outage, preventing users from accessing and using the service. Software company OpenAI has provided an explanation for this incident.
The issues with ChatGPT began on the night of December 11. The outage affected users worldwide, including both free ChatGPT users and ChatGPT Plus subscribers.
Initially, users faced difficulties accessing the ChatGPT website, which eventually went down completely, displaying the message: “ChatGPT is currently unavailable. Status: Identified – We have identified the issue and are working to resolve it.”
Notably, the outage affected not only ChatGPT but also another OpenAI service, Sora, an AI tool that allows users to create videos from text descriptions, which was also inaccessible.
OpenAI announced the outage on social media, stating that they had identified the problem and were working to fix it. The root cause stemmed from OpenAI’s Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
“We received error reports about the API. We have identified the issue and are implementing a fix as quickly as possible to restore services to normal. We apologize for this downtime,” an OpenAI representative shared on social media.
Many users expressed their frustration when ChatGPT went down. Several online users mentioned that ChatGPT had become an invaluable assistant for quickly retrieving information, making its unavailability significantly impact their work.
“I haven’t relied on Google for a long time; everything is answered and searched for by ChatGPT. Now that ChatGPT is down, it feels like I’ve lost a trusted helper,” one user shared on social media.
As of the time of this writing, ChatGPT is still inaccessible.
Notably, this is not the first time ChatGPT has experienced serious global outages. Earlier in June, ChatGPT also faced a global “crash,” preventing users from accessing the service. This issue lasted more than three days before being resolved.
OpenAI did not provide an explanation for the incident that occurred in June.