Multiple reports suggest ChatGPT is down, with issues plaguing users of both the standard chatbot and the API today (Wednesday, 8th November 2023).
ChatGPT updated its status page at 05:54 PST to inform users that they're investigating a major outage. It was then updated seven minutes later, but all it says is that OpenAI is still investigating the problem. There is no further update at the time of writing.
Meanwhile, DownDetector has been flooded by thousands of reports from users in the United States – as well as the rest of the world – that they're struggling to access the chatbot:
When ChatGPT is down, it can be irritating. While you wait for OpenAI to fix ChatGPT, there are lots of things you can do if ChatGPT is down. This includes trying out some of the other chatbots on the market that have similar capabilities, such as Google Bard and Claude 2.
November ChatGPT Outage Runs Into “Thousands”
Over six thousand users in the United States reported issues with ChatGPT via downdetector.com on November 8, with more than 1,500 UK users doing the same. Worldwide, a huge number of people seemed unable to access ChatGPT. Users in other countries also reported issues.
Some users have reported being “blocked” from the service together, with the landing page no longer accessible. Others have simply been served “something has gone wrong messages” like the one Tech.co received today:
ChatGPT Down: A Brief History of Recent Outages
ChatGPT had a pretty clear October and only a couple of short, partial outages during the month of September – there hasn't been a major outage of the app of this magnitude for some time.
August, however, was a bad month for ChatGPT outages, with two occurring in the final week. The latter was logged officially by OpenAI at 06:52 PDT on Thursday, August 31, with an update shared at 7:58 PDT saying that the company was “continuing to work on a remediation and [to] recover service.”
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Earlier in the week, at 7:04 PDT on Tuesday, August 28, the OpenAI Status page was updated to suggest that ChatGPT was experiencing a “partial outage”, although no further information about the nature of the outage was provided.
After that, at 7:46 PDT, the page was changed to suggest there was in fact a “major outage”. The cause has been identified, according to OpenAI, who simply said that they were “investigating this issue”.
OpenAI said at the time that they were implementing and monitoring their own fix, which worked – a similar process will probably take place this time, but it seems like it's taking a little longer to get a grip on the problem.
Stay tuned, as we'll continue to update this article with the latest news on ChatGPT going down as it becomes available.
