ChatGPT recently underwent a significant outage affecting both computer and mobile app users globally.
OpenAI has now addressed the issue, stating that a corrective measure has been implemented and is currently under observation for stability. Since the early hours of today, users reported disruptions, with OpenAI swiftly responding to rectify the situation.
Widespread impact and response
The incident update on OpenAI’s official status page, the accessibility of ChatGPT was compromised for several users. The exact regions impacted by the downtime were not specified in the report. On social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), numerous posts highlighted the ongoing issues, depicting a broad impact. User discussions detailed various technical difficulties, from unresponsive service to problems accessing OpenAI’s main site and mobile applications.
Insights from down detector
Data from Downdetector, a website that tracks online service outages through user reports, indicated a peak in reports shortly after the issue began. Analysis shows that 81% of the complaints were related to problems directly with the ChatGPT service. Additionally, 14% of the feedback pointed to troubles accessing the OpenAI website, and 6% pertained to the mobile app’s functionality. Since the initial surge in reports, there has been a noticeable decline in new reports, suggesting that the remedial actions taken are effective.
User experiences and comparisons to Past Outages
With this recent service interruption, various experiences were shared by ChatGPT users. For instance, one user mentioned that her boyfriend’s ChatGPT Plus subscription was non-functional, though free accounts seemed to operate correctly. Other users encountered specific messages such as “The web server reported a bad gateway error,” indicating server-side problems. Unlike the current situation, OpenAI’s API services remained unaffected, and some users even reported normal response times when using ChatGPT through integrations like Google Sheets. This incident mirrors a similar outage last month where approximately 90% of ChatGPT users faced disruptions across the website and mobile platforms, experiencing delayed or no responses at all.