ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot created by OpenAI, is currently down as of Thursday afternoon.
Key Facts:
- Over 50,000 users have reported outages on Downdetector.com, with a spike in reports around 1:30 p.m. EST.
- The outage continued past 3:30 p.m. EST, with 3,463 additional reports logged.
- At 3:40 p.m. EST, a Forbes query to ChatGPT returned an “Internal Server Error” instead of a response.
- OpenAI acknowledged the issue in an update at 4:05 p.m. EST, attributing the outage to a problem with an unnamed internet service provider and assuring users they were working on a fix.
On X (formerly Twitter), users took to the platform, some joking about returning to “using their brains” due to the outage, while others noted the competition from ChatGPT’s rival, Grok.
This marks the second outage for ChatGPT this month. A similar issue occurred about two weeks ago, which lasted around six hours, according to TechCrunch.
What to Watch For: OpenAI has a history of resolving outages within a few hours, so it’s possible ChatGPT will be back up before the end of the day.
Big Number: $157 billion—this is OpenAI’s current valuation following a $6.6 billion funding round in October.
Background: In addition to the recent outages, ChatGPT also faced technical difficulties in early June, when it was down for several hours. As the most popular AI chatbot on the market, ChatGPT boasts over 300 million weekly users, sending more than one billion messages a day, according to CEO Sam Altman. While the service is free, it does have limitations for users who opt out of the paid tiers.
