ChatGPT was down due to a major outage — and that’s what happened

What happened?

OpenAI has remained tight-lipped about the cause of the recent outage, but it’s likely due to a combination of system updates and increased demand on servers.

This will likely increase in the future as Apple starts giving users access to ChatGPT from Siri (as a subscription rather than as an integration into the system as some have suggested).

“ChatGPT experienced a high error rate from 11:20 AM PT to 1:55 PM PT. This issue has now been resolved,” OpenAI said on its ChatGPT status page. That’s it. This is the overall extent of the explanation for the cause of the outage.

I’ve subscribed to the ChatGPT status update email list and I get 2-3 per day which indicates high rates of bugs or bugs in the system and as the company expands, regularly attracting hundreds of millions of users while adding new features – service outages are likely.

With both Down Detector and OpenAI reporting the return of ChatGPT, the outage appears to have been resolved today. Using OpenAI’s estimates, the service appeared to be down for approximately 2 hours and 35 minutes.

We will add new updates if the situation changes, but if not, consider the ChatGPT situation resolved.

Mark Spoonauer, Global Editor of Tom’s Guide, asked ChatGPT why the error rates were so high. Here’s what the AI-powered chatbot told him:

“Today’s spike in error rates in ChatGPT was caused by an unexpected increase in traffic and demand, which overloaded the system. OpenAI acknowledged the high error rates starting around 11:20 AM PT and resolved the issue by 1:55 PM PT. This incident mostly affected ChatGPT’s web and mobile applications, causing numerous error messages and access issues for users across various platforms. The OpenAI status page initially cited internal server errors and high demand as the main reasons for the outage They have since returned all services to normal operation, although details regarding the root cause of the spike have not been detailed beyond the high traffic levels observed during the incident.

ChatGPT is back up and seems stable.

Here’s the latest update from OpenAI (for now):

Solved – ChatGPT experienced a high error rate from 11:20 AM PST to 1:55 PM PST. This has now been resolved.

Looks like ChatGPT is back up and running again. The status page from OpenAI has everything in green.

Reports of Down Detector have decreased significantly and we are seeing reports of people being able to use ChatGPT on X and Reddit.

Here’s a random fun fact that ChatGPT gave us during its testing: honey never spoils. Archaeologists have found jars of honey in ancient Egyptian tombs that are more than 3,000 years old and are still edible. Honey’s natural acidity, low moisture content and the presence of hydrogen peroxide significantly extend its shelf life.

ChatGPT may be back online. The service was noted by Tom’s Guide’s global editor, Mark Spoonauer, that it is investigating the outage.

It suggests a “stable update” on your browser or Mac app.

Down Detector is still getting reports of ChatGPT crashing but we’ve been able to get it working for a bit.

Tom’s Guide’s global editor-in-chief, Mark Spoonauer, discovered something very interesting on X.

As we posted earlier in this live blog, people are now flocking to ChatGPT alternatives. It’s no surprise that #GoogleGemini is trending now on X. I guess one company’s loss is another company’s gain!

A DownDetector user shares his experience. Although you are able to send a request on ChatGPT, it fails to generate responses. You will get a pulsating black dot instead of proper response.

X (formerly Twitter) users are still discussing ChatGPT crash. While some are legitimately frustrated, others (like the user posted above) are trying to make light of the situation.

However, if you rely on ChatGPT for work, I’m sure you’re going to have a bad Monday. Hopefully this recent outage didn’t cause any serious problems for anyone.

As of 4:15pm, it still isn’t working for me, but it seems to be trying. When I type a query – in this case, “Does it work?” I get a pulsing black dot for a while, before it goes back to an error message.

Gemini, Claude 3, and Perplexity all seem to work well.

How to do a hard reset on ChatGPT

Even when the ChatGPT service is restored, it may still be necessary for you to perform a factory reset for it to work properly. Here’s what you need to know:

Mac:
On Chrome or Firefox: Press Cmd + Shift + R
In Safari: Press Cmd + Option + R

Computer:
Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge: Press Ctrl + F5

Portable devices:

Clear the cache manually and reload the page as expected.

Update (4 p.m. ET): ChatGPT is still down. It looked like it was starting to pick up a bit, but the progress seemed to have stalled. the Comments section DownDetector It’s getting a little hot now too.

“How am I going to try to use chat gpt to create stories that violates policy for me if Ai is down,” ThunderChannel 100 wrote.

“I asked chatgpt when chatgpt will be fixed. Still waiting for an answer,” David wrote.

What is ChatGPT? For those of you who somehow clicked on this story and are wondering what all the fuss is about, ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot that can do everything from writing papers to creating images, based on the text that prompts you to enter. Despite launching in 2022, it has gained huge popularity as one of the leading AI systems in the past year, with companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple rushing to integrate AI into their products.

Based on the company’s own records, ChatGPT has experienced at least one major outage per month dating back to March. Some lasted no more than 30 minutes, but others lasted more than eight hours.

Our global editor-in-chief, Mark Spoonauer, is digging into the very simple interface on ChatGPT right now. No date. There are no answers to your queries. You can just sit back and think about what AI can do for you.

The last time ChatGPT went down, traffic to a number of the best ChatGPT alternatives spiked, and as a result, those services struggled with increased load. Claude of Anthropy and Bewilderment all had their problems. We will also be monitoring them to see if they are affected by the recent ChatGPT outage.

People also took to Threads to complain about the ChatGPT outage. “I think ChatGPT was playing football manager too much,” he wrote. asherwood21.

It is not surprising that many have taken to social media to air their complaints.

This tweet is from @Egocrata on X sums up the frustration felt by many ChatGPT users. “ChatGPT would be more useful if the stupid thing wasn’t down half the time. You can’t rely on it at all.”

Comments on DownDetector paint a very bad picture of the recent ChatGPT outage. One user ANA says, “You used confusion better than this garbage.”

Just last week, OpenAI and Apple announced a partnership, where ChatGPT will be integrated into Apple’s AI platform, called Apple Intelligence, in iOS 18. In this implementation, much of the processing will be done on-device, before moving to Apple’s servers. Apple. .

ChatGPT was down for about four hours on June 4, until engineers were able to fix the issue, but they noted that some users would have to do a “hard update” for the service to work again.

While we wait for it to come back – once again – it’s worth reviewing our guide to ChatGPT alternatives – including Claude 3 and MetaAI.

Reports of the OpenAI crash appear to have started around 2pm EST, according to DownDetector.

After about 40 minutes, Status update on OpenAI “We are currently investigating the high error rates affecting ChatGPT.”