ChatGPT was down for many – here’s what happened

No answers

This is what the outage looks like when you’re trying to get a prompt response from ChatGPT 4o.

What’s notable here is that the platform is not down but ChatGPT’s ability to answer after ingesting a prompt appears compromised.

ChatGPT has yet to acknowledge any issues on its X (formerly Twitter) feed but we’ll keep an eye on it for updates.

Up not down

Downdetector’s report tracker for OpenAI services has been rising since the morning (9AM ET) and steadily rising since then.

It’s worth noting that the service is tracking all OpenAI services and not just ChatGPT. However, most reports we’re seeing elsewhere only point to ChatGPT as the primary culprit.

The outage may not be global since our counterparts in the UK report no issues with processing prompts.

We’re seeing them on both the desktop and iOS app.

Reddit gets it

While not everyone is reporting issues, the outage has risen to what we like to call “Reddit Level”. That’s when word of it props up on Reddit, a place where someone can stand up and say (post), “YoC chatGPT is not working for me. Whatsup?!” Reddit’s 1.6B users will then be on the case.

In this case, the user asked if it was down and then noted how his chat history appeared to have disappeared. Thankfully, our chat history is still in place.

Sora block

While we don’t have many individual outage reports for Sora, we did find that we can no longer log into the generative video AI platform. That’s a bit worse than ChatGPT where we can at least log in and enter a prompt that currently goes nowhere.

Downdetector doesn’t break out individual OpenAI service platforms, but, since this is an OpenAI outage, we can safely assume that it may be affecting more than just ChatGPT.

Signs of life

While we successfully entered a prompt and received a response from ChatGPT, the results spit out slowly, like a second per word. So there is still sluggishness here and we’re not clear if OpenAI and ChatGPT are out of the woods, yet.

We’ve also contacted OpenAI for comment on the service issue and we’ll update our live coverage with its response.

OpenAI confirms

While we have yet to hear back from OpenAI, its own status system reveals ongoing issues.

“We’re currently experiencing issues,” notes the page and specifically points to ChatGPT and “increased error rates.”

Even though OpenAI doesn’t call put Sora, we can see from the chart that it too has had a few blips this morning.

Sora coming back

We were able to successfully log into Sora, enter a prompt, and generate a video. That’s good news for all you fans of anthropomorphic animals (our own personal favorite generative video subject).

Still, if OpenAI’s servers are having trouble, you may want to wait a bit for the platform to clear the decks before you hand it any mission-critical work.

The recovery continues

All of ChatGPT’s key models are now working again – at least in our tests – but the results still flow in very slowly. While a bit frustrating, it’s preferable to the models being completely unavailable.

Similarly, Downdetector reports for OpenAI have been on the decline, and that’s a good sign from the wider audience.

A return to normal

As you can see from the above chart, OpenAI, and ChatGPT in particular, is returning to normal operations.

OpenAI offered a small update on its status page regarding the outage, noting that it’s identified the issue and is working on “implementing mitigation.” Whatever OpenAI is doing, it appears to be working.

Regular speed

Tests of multiple ChatGPT models show the generative AI platform is not only back, it’s essentially at full speed. 4o, o1, and 03-mini are all returning answers almost instantly (the reasoning ones are designed to take a beat before spitting out a response).

Tough day for many AI

When ChatGPT outage reports first surfaced, we noticed that Perplexity was, according to Downdetector. It quickly recovered but now we’re seeing Anthropic’s Claude users reporting service issues.

Granted, Claude AI is not nearly as popular or widely used as ChatGPT but one has to wonder if these outages are in any way connected.

It is possible that some systems might be relying on the same web service provider (say they were all using AWS). Not likely, but the coincidence is interesting and, for now, unexplained.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT is almost back to normal.

It could’ve been worse

A closer look at OpenAI’s status page reveals an over 99% uptime for Sora and ChatGPT, a great record by any measure. Plus, this outage, which appears nearly resolved, did not spread globally.

Multiple check-ins with our UK counterparts found a responsive ChatGPT service capable of instantly answering any prompt.

In fact, this outage didn’t even warrant a red bar. There were outages in December 2024 and January of this year which were much more severe.

It’s over

According to OpenAI’s status page, there are no longer any issues. TechRadar can confirm that ChatGPT is now functioning normally. Now it’s time to get back to work with these penguins.