ChatGPT experiences widespread global outage, affecting millions of users

This marks the third major ChatGPT outage since December, underlining the challenges of maintaining consistent and reliable AI services

OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, experienced a significant outage on the evening of January 23, impacting millions of users across India and around the world. Users attempting to access the platform were met with an "Error 503: Service Temporarily Unavailable" message, signalling a major server issue and widespread ChatGPT downtime.

Impact of downtime and surge in user reports

Downdetector, a platform that tracks real-time outages, registered a massive spike in user reports, with more than 1,000 complaints flooding in within a short window of time. Between 5:00 PM and 6:00 PM, over 3,700 users reported issues, with the majority—88%—indicating that ChatGPT was not working for them. The remaining 12% cited difficulties with the platform’s API, which is integral for third-party applications. Both GPT-4 and its smaller variant, GPT-4 mini, appeared to be affected by the ChatGPT outage.

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OpenAI’s official status page confirmed the server issues, stating that both the chatbot and the API were facing unusual performance problems. The company mentioned that there were higher-than-usual error rates, and investigations were underway to determine the cause of the ChatGPT downtime. However, OpenAI is yet to disclose specific details regarding the service errors that triggered the disruption.

Social media abuzz with frustrations and humour

As the outage continued, social media platforms such as Twitter and TikTok became the go-to spaces for users to express frustration over ChatGPT not working. Many shared their experiences, while others turned to humour to cope with the unexpected disruption. Memes flooded the platforms, and users discussed their reliance on ChatGPT for tasks ranging from personal projects to work-related activities. The emotional impact of losing access to the tool was evident, as individuals expressed both concern and amusement over the sudden ChatGPT error messages.

Some users speculated that a technical glitch or even a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack could have been the cause of the outage, though these remain unconfirmed. The recurring error messages like “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable” and “Bad Gateway” pointed to server issues or network instability.

This marks the third major ChatGPT outage since December, underlining the challenges of maintaining consistent and reliable AI services. As OpenAI continues to investigate and work on restoring service, this incident highlights the critical role AI platforms like ChatGPT play in users' daily lives, with disruptions causing both practical and emotional ripple effects.

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