Islamabad, Jan 24: ChatGPT is working again after an outage saw the world’s best-known artificial intelligence (AI) tool taken offline.
Thousands of ChatGPT users were caught off guard Thursday morning as they encountered error messages like “bad gateway” and “internal server error” when trying to access the popular AI chatbot. The unexpected outage left users scrambling to Reddit and social media for explanations.
Initial reports on Down Detector highlighted that the disruption was most pronounced in New York City, but posts on X (formerly Twitter) revealed the issue was global. Users expressed frustration, with some resorting to humor, sharing memes about being forced to think without AI assistance.
OpenAI addressed the issue swiftly, releasing a statement at 7:26 a.m. ET, stating, “The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.” By 7:43 a.m. ET, the problem was reportedly resolved, though intermittent errors persisted for some users into the 8 a.m. hour.
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Despite the quick resolution, the outage disrupted workflows for countless professionals, students, and casual users. One user humorously remarked, “ChatGPT is down during work hours? Guess I’ll have to use my brain!”
The incident underscores ChatGPT’s immense global impact since its debut in November 2022. OpenAI reports over 300 million weekly users, with more than a billion messages submitted daily. The platform has become indispensable for many, offering everything from coding assistance to content creation.
This disruption comes amid OpenAI’s ongoing expansion in AI infrastructure, supported by a pledged $500 billion investment. While the outage was short-lived, it’s a reminder of how reliant the world has become on generative AI tools like ChatGPT.
As OpenAI continues to refine its systems, users can only hope for greater reliability moving forward, ensuring minimal disruptions to productivity in the future.
