On Thursday, just hours after OpenAI announced its integration with iPhone, iPad and Mac, ChatGPT suffered a major outage that rendered the service inaccessible worldwide. Minutes after the outage, the company acknowledged the issue and patched the bug, bringing back the AI chatbot. This is the second major service outage by OpenAI, following one in early November.
In an X post, OpenAI wrote: “We are currently experiencing an outage. We have identified the issue and are working on a fix. Sorry, and we will keep you updated!”
We are currently experiencing an outage. We have identified the issue and are working to resolve it.
Sorry and we will keep you updated!
– OpenAI (@OpenAI) December 12, 2024
ChatGPT was down for about three hours for users around the world, where users also faced issues on the web and the app. For now, there is no clarity on what caused this disruption. Incidentally, this happened a few hours after Meta’s WhatsApp and Facebook were also outage.
The outage prevented millions of users from accessing the chatbot, and people weren’t happy about it, especially those who paid $20 for a Plus membership or $200 for a Pro membership.
Digital services, despite best efforts from brands, face outages due to various reasons. These can range from technical errors such as software bugs, hardware failures, or network congestion to human errors in coding or system maintenance, and it is difficult to pinpoint an outage to a specific issue unless the manufacturer confirms it.
Unexpected increases in user traffic can also overpower servers, causing slowdowns or complete outages.
In addition, external factors such as cyber attacks, natural disasters, or power outages may disrupt service availability. As digital infrastructure becomes increasingly complex and interconnected, unfortunately, the potential for disruptions remains a constant challenge.