ChatGPT, the widely-used AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, experienced a significant global outage, leaving thousands of users unable to access its services and triggering widespread frustration.
The disruption began around 12:10 PM IST, as reported by the outage-tracking platform Downdetector. Within a short time, over 1,000 outage reports were logged in the United Kingdom, and nearly 500 in the United States, with additional reports emerging from other regions including India and Japan.
Users encountering the issue reported being met with an error message stating, “If this issue persists, please contact us through our help center,” though the link provided was unavailable. Both the web interface and mobile application were affected, leading many users to voice their concerns and complaints on social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter).
The outage appears to be impacting multiple components of the ChatGPT platform, including key features like search functionality, advanced data analysis, file uploads, DALL·E image generation, GPT Vision, and voice interaction modes. The issue also extends to OpenAI’s APIs and the Sora service.
In response, OpenAI confirmed that it is aware of the disruption and is actively working to resolve it. According to the company’s system status page, the outage has resulted in elevated error rates and slower performance across several tools. While the company has acknowledged the issue as a partial outage, the root cause has not yet been disclosed.
The disruption sparked a mix of concern and humor among users online. Some shared serious frustrations, while others posted light-hearted remarks like, “It wasn’t until ChatGPT crashed that I realized GPT-4o was like a friend.”
The incident underscores the increasing reliance on AI-driven tools in daily life, especially as ChatGPT now boasts more than 400 million weekly users. OpenAI has yet to announce a timeline for a full recovery.
