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ChatGPT Outage Disrupts Users of the Most Popular Gen AI Tool

It's two outages so far in less than 24 hours.

Headshot of Lisa Lacy
Headshot of Lisa Lacy
Lisa Lacy Former Lead AI Writer
Lisa joined CNET after more than 20 years as a reporter and editor. Her coverage of AI ranged from a hands-on with OpenAI's empathetic Advanced Voice Mode to in-depth explainers on LLMs, hallucinations and more, as well as a series profiling AI startups. Earlier career highlights include a 2020 story about problematic brand mascots, which preceded historic name changes, and going viral in 2021 after daring to ask, "Why are cans of cranberry sauce labeled upside-down?" She has interviewed celebrities like Serena Williams, Brian Cox and Tracee Ellis Ross. Anna Kendrick said her name sounds like a character from Beverly Hills, 90210. Rick Astley asked if she knew what Rickrolling was. She lives outside Atlanta with her son, two golden retrievers and two cats.
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Lisa Lacy
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A screenshot of the OpenAI status page, indicating a ChatGPT outage.
OpenAI/Screenshot by Lisa Lacy/CNET

AI chatbot ChatGPT on Tuesday experienced a pair of outages.

In a statement on the OpenAI status page time stamped at 7:33 a.m. PT, the startup said ChatGPT was unavailable for some users and that it was investigating the issue. At 10:17 a.m. PT, it posted that the problem had been resolved.

"We experienced a major outage impacting all users on all plans of ChatGPT," the company said on its status site. "The impact included all ChatGPT related services. The impact did not include platform.openai.com or the API."

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It's unclear what caused the problem, but we've reached out to OpenAI for comment and will update this story when the company responds. 

Since it first rolled out in November 2022, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm with its generative AI capabilities, which offer the potential to upend creativity, work and more for over 150 million users. It's inspired a wave of competitors, and their battle for relevancy remains ongoing.

The outage that was just resolved actually marked ChatGPT's second outage of the day. The first was flagged at 12:21 a.m. PT. OpenAI said it identified the issue about an hour later and implemented a fix as of 4:19 a.m. PT. It reported the incident as resolved as of 4:45 a.m. PT.

It's been a bumpy few weeks for generative AI companies. News of OpenAI's outage follows the relative implosion of Google's AI Overviews, a new search experience that was widely mocked — and then scaled back — after it told consumers to eat glue and rocks.

Just a few weeks earlier, both Google and OpenAI debuted new gen AI models to much fanfare. OpenAI has also been busy signing deals with social media platforms and media companies to boost access to real-time data.