OpenAI faced a significant disruption on Wednesday, as ChatGPT, Sora, and its developer-facing API experienced a major outage starting at approximately 3 p.m. PT. According to the company’s status page, services were largely restored by 9 p.m. PT, marking several hours of downtime.
The outage affected many users, with error messages appearing when attempting to access ChatGPT.com and Sora.com. “ChatGPT is currently unavailable,” the message read, as OpenAI worked to address the issue. The exact cause of the outage remains unclear, though the company noted that it was related to a configuration change that led to server unavailability. OpenAI provided updates on its status page, assuring users that services were slowly coming back online by around 7 p.m. PT.
This disruption coincided with the release of iOS 18.2, which included OpenAI’s integration with Apple Intelligence. Some users reported issues with ChatGPT not functioning properly within the Apple platform due to the downtime. OpenAI’s developer community lead, Edwin Arbus, clarified that the outage was not related to the “12 Days of OpenAI” event or the new integration with Apple.
The timing of the outage is noteworthy, as OpenAI had also launched its Sora platform earlier in the week. Sora had already faced challenges when demand for the service exceeded expectations, leading to capacity issues on launch day. Users who signed up were unable to generate videos, seeing messages that OpenAI’s servers were at full capacity.
The service interruptions also came just after Meta’s products faced a global service outage on the same day, indicating a broader trend in tech disruptions. Despite the downtime, OpenAI’s “12 Days of OpenAI” event continued, with the company releasing new products, including the Sora platform and Canvas updates, alongside announcements like the full release of the o1 reasoning model.
For more details on the outage and recovery, visit TechCrunch.