ChatGPT Experiences Major Global Outage, Disrupting AI Services

ChatGPT was down Thursday - what we know about the outage

ChatGPT experienced a major outage on Thursday morning.OpenAI's status page confirmed "elevated errors."Update: The incident appears to be over as of 12:40 p.m. ET. If you got error messages while using ChatGPT today, you weren't alone. The popular AI chatbot experienced a significant outage today, with several users flooding social media to confirm it wasn't working. The outage appears to have started around 11 a.m. ET. OpenAI's official status page posted an incident, stating, "We're currently experiencing issues" and "Increased errors on ChatGPT conversations." The company confirmed users are experiencing "elevated errors" and is "working on implementing a mitigation." However, by 12:35 p.m. ET, OpenAI updated its status page to say ChatGPT is "fully operational" and it's "not aware" of any issues. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Also: Is ChatGPT Plus still worth $20 when the free version offers so much - including GPT-5? Downdetector, which is owned by ZDNET parent company Ziff Davis, tracks outages for most sites and services, and it lit up like a Christmas this morning -- with a massive, vertical spike in user-submitted problems. Hundreds of reports came in around noon, with 94% specifically about ChatGPT rather than other OpenAI services like Sora. Some users on social media noted other services might have also been affected. Also: How ChatGPT actually works (and why it's been so game-changing) "Chatgpt and grok are both down, what is going on? AWS at it again?" one developer posted on X. Another user joked, "ChatGPT is down and I'm going to have to be sent home from work like in the olden days when it snowed." Downdetector's homepage showed many other services experiencing user-reported errors or outages at the same time, with spikes clearly visible for AWS, Grok AI, NordVPN, and more. Grok's status page indicated it had service availability issues starting at 11:31 a.m. ET, but it too is now fully operational. OpenAI hasn't given a cause, but speculation immediatelty pointed to a broad cloud outage (like the AWS incident earlier this week). I wondered if it could be related to new feature rollouts, with Atlas launching this week and even updates announced for it today. Either way, Gemini appeared to be working through the incident, as were other popular AI chatbot services. So, if you haven't taken the time yet to test the competition, outages like the one from today are the perfect time to try. Also: Is OpenAI's Atlas browser the Chrome killer we've been waiting for? Try it for yourself I've contacted OpenAI and will update this story when I know more. Want more stories about AI? Check out AI Leaderboard, our weekly newsletter. Editor's note: This story was originally published at 11:40am ET on Oct. 23. It's being updated live as the outage unfolds.

ChatGPT is down -- live updates on chatbot outage affecting the UK right now

Everyone's favorite AI chat service is having problems today At around 4:15 p.m. BST (11:15 a.m. ET), we started seeing a spike in reports for OpenAI and its ChatGPT service on DownDetector. The spike is small in the U.S., but it's over 3,000 on the U.K. version of DownDetector. OpenAI acknowledged the outage on its status page, saying that it's seeing "increased error rates." Tom's Guide has confirmed with its UK team members, who have reported either a slowing down of the chatbot or it not working at all. There's no telling how long this ChatGPT downtime could last, but hopefully, it's not too long, so users can get back to work with the help of their AI tools.

Downdetector reports OpenAI services, including ChatGPT, experiencing outages

Users are reporting widespread issues accessing OpenAI's ChatGPT and related services, according to Downdetector. The outage tracking platform has observed a significant surge in problem submissions, indicating a potential disruption in OpenAI's systems. This spike suggests a widespread problem affecting many users attempting to connect to the popular AI platform. Downdetector has reported a spike in problem submissions for OpenAI, indicating that several users are currently facing issues accessing ChatGPT and other associated services. The outage tracking platform's live graph shows a sharp rise in reports, suggesting a possible disruption in OpenAI's systems. The website collects and analyses user reports in real time to determine whether a company is experiencing an outage. It monitors signals from its own pages, social media platforms such as X, and other sources across the web to automatically detect service incidents. Downdetector determines whether a rise in reports qualifies as an incident by comparing it with a calculated baseline of normal report volume. This baseline is based on the average number of reports received for a particular service at that time of day over the past year. An outage is confirmed only when the number of reports significantly exceeds this typical range. The system accepts only the first report from each user for a specific company, while additional details from the same user about the same issue are stored but not counted as new problem reports. Every four minutes, Downdetector's system evaluates the status of each monitored company to update its listings. Depending on the report volume and duration, Downdetector categorises each company under one of three statuses: "No problems" when there is little or no evidence of an incident, "Possible problems" when there is moderate evidence that a company may be experiencing an issue, and "Problems" when there is strong and sustained evidence that a company is facing an incident. Users can report issues through a company's dedicated status page on Downdetector, selecting from a predefined list of problem types such as login errors, loading failures, or server connection issues. The platform also uses social media sentiment analysis and other online indicators to assess whether an unusually high number of users are affected. Each company page provides a "Problems last 24 hours" chart showing recent activity, a live outage map, a list of the most reported issues, and a comments section for user feedback. Verified partners can use the "Downdetector Communicate" feature to interact directly with customers during disruptions. Problem reports are attributed to the user's location and country. If a user submits an issue for a local service through another country's page, Downdetector reassigns the report to the user's actual location. Reports for unmonitored services are stored but not included in outage statistics for that region. (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)