OpenAI reports a ‘major outage’ affecting ChatGPT and Sora, leaving users in frustration
The world’s go-to artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, faced a significant outage on Thursday, sending shockwaves across the digital sphere as thousands reported being locked out. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, alongside the Sora video-generation model, went down, leaving users scrambling for alternatives—or simply waiting in frustration.
Reports flooded in from social media and monitoring sites like Downdetector, where over 12,000 complaints were logged within 24 hours. Users encountered login issues, error screens, and stalled workflows, sparking a wave of memes and jokes online.
Embed from Getty Images“We are currently experiencing an issue with high error rates on ChatGPT, the API, and Sora,” OpenAI revealed in a status update late Thursday morning Pacific Time. The company attributed the disruption to an “upstream provider” and assured users that it was “monitoring” the situation while working on a fix.
OpenAI’s status page confirmed a “major outage” affecting both ChatGPT and its application programming interface (API), with Sora experiencing a “partial” outage. This dual crash left users without the services they rely on for everything from professional tasks to casual queries.
Social media exploded with reactions. Reddit users shared screenshots of malfunctioning login screens, while others took to X (formerly Twitter) to lament the sudden inconvenience. One user quipped, “I sat down to study, opened the iPad, and ChatGPT is down. I refuse to google like a caveman.” Another chimed in, “Well, ChatGPT’s down, back to using my own brain again.”
The timing of the crash couldn’t have been worse for those relying on the service during the busy post-Christmas period. Students, professionals, and even casual users suddenly found themselves without their trusted AI assistant, exposing just how deeply integrated such tools have become in daily life.
This outage is yet another reminder of the fragility of reliance on technology. Despite its promise of innovation, even the most advanced systems are not immune to disruptions, whether due to technical glitches or external dependencies.
OpenAI, which has recently launched ChatGPT Enterprise and rapidly expanded its suite of AI offerings, now faces the challenge of restoring user confidence. The outage has highlighted the risks associated with centralised AI systems and the cascading effects they can have when they fail.
As the company works to resolve the issue, users are left in the lurch, joking about the experience but also grappling with its implications. For now, OpenAI has not provided a definitive timeline for full restoration, leaving many to wonder: what happens when AI, the modern crutch for productivity and creativity, suddenly goes offline?
