ChatGPT faced a severe outage, leaving thousands of users unable to access the AI chatbot. The tool faced downtime in the US mostly, and Indian users reported minimal issues. Downdetector saw thousands of reports, with people complaining over image generation and conversations.
ChatGPT outage: US users affected the most
According to outage-tracking website Downdetector, more than 13,000 users reported problems at the peak of the disruption, which began at approximately 12:32 PM PST (around 1:50 AM IST on February 4). The complaints represented a dramatic spike from the usual baseline of just 19 reports, with the figure peaking at over 20,000 reports by some accounts.
The outage affected multiple features of the AI chatbot, including conversations, search functionality, image generation, and the recently launched Codex and Atlas features. Users attempting to access ChatGPT encountered error messages or found themselves stuck on loading screens.
OpenAI acknowledged the technical difficulties on its official status page, confirming 'elevated error rates' for ChatGPT and platform users, as well as issues with fine-tuning jobs. The Sam Altman-led technology company posted an update stating, "We're currently experiencing issues."
ChatGPT outage: OpenAI responded quickly
OpenAI responded quickly to address the technical issues. By 4:21 PM ET, the company's status page confirmed: "We have identified the issue, applied the necessary mitigations and are monitoring the recovery." The problem was officially marked as resolved at 5:14 PM ET, with ChatGPT listed as "operational" by 6:30 PM ET.
The outage occurred just one day after OpenAI launched its Codex app for Mac, which Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said achieved over 200,000 downloads on its first day. The timing led to speculation that increased user load following the Mac app launch may have contributed to the service disruption, though OpenAI has not confirmed any connection.
Interestingly, rival AI chatbot Claude, developed by Anthropic, also experienced an outage on the same day, with the company listing "elevated error rate on API across all Claude models."
