Is ChatGPT Down? Users Report Problems With OpenAI Services as Company Faces String of Recent Disruptions

Users reported problems with OpenAI's services on Tuesday, according to outage-tracking site Downdetector. The reports added to a string of disruptions that have affected ChatGPT and the company's developer tools over the past week.

Downdetector, which compiles problem reports submitted by users and other sources, showed that people were having trouble with OpenAI services, which include the ChatGPT chatbot, image-generation tools and the OpenAI API platform used by developers.

It was not immediately clear how widespread the problems were. As of Tuesday morning, OpenAI's official status page did not show a new incident for the day, and a third-party monitoring service listed all of the company's main components, including ChatGPT, its APIs and its Codex coding tool, as operational.

OpenAI did not immediately comment on the user reports.

What users are seeing

User-submitted reports on outage-tracking sites in recent days have described a range of problems, including:

• Slow responses or the chatbot failing to respond
• "Server not responding" error messages
• Responses not displaying in the app
• Chats failing to load or disappearing
• Trouble logging in or uploading files

Some users also reported seeing a "Request failed with status 431" error, according to monitoring service StatusGator. Such reports are unverified, and occasional complaints can reflect individual connection issues rather than a broader outage.

Downdetector tracks outages by counting the number of problem reports it receives. A spike above normal levels typically indicates a wider issue, though the figures do not represent the total number of affected users.

A week of glitches

Tuesday's reports follow several confirmed incidents in the past week.

On Oct. 20, OpenAI reported degraded performance across ChatGPT, Codex and its APIs, according to outage trackers.

Early on Oct. 22, the company reported elevated errors in ChatGPT conversations and its Responses API, a tool developers use to build applications on OpenAI's models. That incident affected users in India, Japan and South Korea. OpenAI said it was "investigating the issue for the listed services" and later applied a fix. The problem lasted several hours before OpenAI said "all impacted services have now fully recovered."

Other smaller incidents followed. On Oct. 23, OpenAI reported a degraded experience with ChatGPT app connections, problems with its help center chat support and delays in customer support responses. On Monday, the company briefly reported elevated error rates on endpoints for its advertising platform, an incident that lasted about 10 minutes.

Frequent incidents

OpenAI has reported dozens of service incidents in recent months. Monitoring service IsDown counted 45 incidents over the past 90 days, one classified as a major outage and the rest as minor. The median incident lasted just under two hours.

The most significant recent disruption came on Sept. 3, when ChatGPT and Codex went down for many users worldwide. Downdetector logged tens of thousands of problem reports, with figures reported by various outlets reaching above 70,000 at the peak.

At the time, OpenAI reported "elevated errors across ChatGPT and Codex" and said it had "put in a fix." The company later told reporters that "this issue has now been resolved." OpenAI attributed that outage to a routing error, according to USA Today. Full recovery took several hours.

Rival AI services including Anthropic's Claude and xAI's Grok also reported problems around the same time that day.

Growing reliance on AI

Outages at OpenAI draw wide attention because of how many people and businesses now rely on its tools. ChatGPT is used by hundreds of millions of people for tasks ranging from writing and research to coding and customer service. Thousands of companies build products on OpenAI's API, so disruptions can ripple across other apps and services.

The company has also expanded into new areas, including advertising within ChatGPT and its Codex software development tool. That has added more services that can be affected when problems occur.

The disruptions come during an intense period of competition in artificial intelligence. On Monday, rival Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, publicly filed for an initial public offering. Tech giants including Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta Platforms, all major players in AI, report quarterly earnings this week.

What users can do

When ChatGPT or other OpenAI services are disrupted, users can:

• Check OpenAI's official status page for confirmed incidents and updates
• Refresh the page or restart the app
• Log out and log back in
• Clear the browser cache or try a different browser or device
• Wait for the company to restore service, since most incidents are resolved within a few hours

Developers using the API can monitor the status page for component-specific updates and build retry logic into their applications to handle temporary errors.

This is a developing story and may be updated as more information becomes available.