Why is ChatGPT Down? OpenAI Scrambles to Fix Global Outage

OpenAI is currently in crisis mode, actively investigating and working to resolve significant “elevated error rates and latency” impacting its core services, including the popular ChatGPT chatbot, the innovative Sora text-to-video AI, and its crucial APIs. The issues, which began around 12:21 PM NST (3:00 AM ET), have led to a partial outage, frustrating users globally.

According to OpenAI’s official status page, updated just minutes ago at 3:41 PM NST, the company is “continuing to investigate this issue.” The problem has been ongoing for approximately three hours, affecting a substantial number of components across all three key services: 14 affected components for APIs, 21 for ChatGPT, and 4 for Sora.

The timeline of updates from OpenAI’s status page reveals a consistent investigative effort throughout the afternoon. The first acknowledgment of the issue for the general services (APIs, ChatGPT, Sora) came at 12:21 PM NST, followed by subsequent updates at 1:52 PM NST and 3:11 PM NST, each reiterating the ongoing investigation into elevated error rates and latency.

Separately, an issue specifically impacting Sora was identified at 3:07 PM NST, described as “degraded performance” due to elevated error rates. This indicates a potentially distinct or exacerbated problem affecting the text-to-video AI.

While OpenAI has not yet disclosed the root cause of these widespread disruptions, the continuous updates underscore the severity of the situation and the company’s commitment to restoring full functionality. Users attempting to access these services may continue to experience delays, error messages, or complete inaccessibility as the company works to mitigate the problem. The duration and full extent of the current service interruption remain uncertain as OpenAI pushes to find a solution.