Popular AI chatbot ChatGPT is back online after a widespread outage affected thousands of users globally on Thursday. The outage, which began around 11:00 GMT, prevented users from accessing the service, leaving many unable to utilize the tool for work and other tasks.
Website outage tracker Downdetector recorded over 10,000 reports from users in the UK alone, indicating the significant scale of the disruption. Users attempting to access ChatGPT during the outage were met with a “bad gateway error” message from the web server.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, acknowledged the issue on its status page, stating that the app was “experiencing elevated error rates” and that they were “investigating.” A fix was implemented at 15:09 GMT, and OpenAI confirmed they were “monitoring the results.”
The company has not yet released a statement regarding the cause of the outage.
The disruption sparked a flurry of activity on social media, with many users expressing their frustration and highlighting the impact on their workflows. Some users, however, took a lighter approach, with one user on X (formerly Twitter) joking, “ChatGPT is down again? During the work day? So you’re telling me I have to… THINK?!”
Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has become a globally recognized AI tool. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that as of December 2024, over 300 million people worldwide use ChatGPT weekly. While a free version of the chatbot is available, OpenAI also offers paid membership tiers costing up to $200 per month.
The outage follows a recent announcement of a $500 billion investment into AI infrastructure in the US by tech firms, including OpenAI.