A partial ChatGPT outage prevented thousands from using the popular chatbot

The widely-used AI chatbot ChatGPT is currently facing performance challenges following a partial outage that began early Tuesday morning. OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot, confirmed that they started investigating the issues at 2:36 AM, with reports of problems escalating around 5:30 AM, according to outage-tracking site Downdetector. This disruption has not only impacted ChatGPT but also affected OpenAI's video generation tool, Sora, along with the application programming interface (API) utilized by developers. At the peak of the outage, nearly 2,000 error reports were logged by Downdetector on Tuesday morning alone. Although OpenAI indicated that they are observing a recovery in their developer tools and ChatGPT, they cautioned that a complete restoration of all services may take several hours. By 11 AM ET, ChatGPT was functioning normally when tested by CNN, but issues re-emerged later in the afternoon, as confirmed by both OpenAI and Downdetector. In a statement on social media platform X, OpenAI acknowledged the elevated error rates and latency affecting ChatGPT and assured users that they had identified the root cause of the problem, emphasizing that they are working diligently to resolve the situation. This outage comes at a time when ChatGPT's presence in workplaces has surged, with Glassdoor reporting a doubling of its usage over the past year. Additionally, Pew Research indicates that the percentage of U.S. teenagers using ChatGPT for schoolwork has risen from 13% in 2023 to 26%. Users took to social media to express their frustration, humorously lamenting the difficulty of completing basic tasks without the assistance of the chatbot. One user quipped, “ChatGPT is down…Which means I actually have to type out my own emails at work. Send prayers.” The incident follows a trend of notable outages affecting various platforms, including Zoom and X, earlier this year.