tl;dr
OpenAI's ChatGPT, APIs, and Sora video service have been experiencing a global outage for about three hours since approximately 3 a.m. EST. Users report elevated error rates and latency, with ChatGPT returning "Error in message stream" responses. The only functioning service is the Playground. Hundr...
OpenAI's ChatGPT, APIs, and Sora video service experienced a global outage lasting over three hours, beginning around 3 a.m. EST. This disruption caused widespread errors and latency issues, with many users seeing "Error in message stream" responses on ChatGPT through both paid accounts and mobile applications. During this incident, the only OpenAI service that remained operational was the Playground, which allows for fine-tuning and experimentation with AI models.
Throughout the outage, hundreds of complaints flooded DownDetector, mainly concerning ChatGPT’s malfunctioning. Despite the volume of user reports, OpenAI had not publicly acknowledged the issue on its social media platforms, such as its X account, where the latest updates focused on new features like "Advanced Voice," designed to enable more natural and real-time conversations with ChatGPT.
This outage adds to ChatGPT’s history of service interruptions, including disruptions following the expansion of GPT-4 access to free users and integration into Apple's Intelligence platform. In November 2023, OpenAI also faced a significant distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack reportedly linked to Russian hackers. Furthermore, some researchers have noted a decline in ChatGPT’s performance over time, raising concerns about the company’s promises for continuous improvement of its language models.
OpenAI's status page initially reported a "degraded" ChatGPT service on Monday, which was soon marked as resolved, but the recent outage suggests ongoing challenges. While users eagerly await a full resolution, this incident highlights the vulnerabilities of widely-used AI services and the increasing pressure on OpenAI to maintain stability as its technology becomes more integrated into everyday tools and platforms.