ChatGPT outage: OpenAI platform back after major disruption

Sam Altman-led OpenAI suffered a massive outage making its ChatGPT chatbot unavailable to millions of users, but it is back up now.

OpenAI's ChatGPT suffered a 90-minute outage today. (REUTERS)

Major Outage across ChatGPT and API: The extreme popularity of Sam Altman-led OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot may well have suffered a big dent in its teflon-coated image today as the platform suffered a massive outage and remained down for over an hour. In fact, it was down for as long as 90 minutes. Not just that, OpenAI's API services too were down along with ChatGPT. It is back up now, but not before furious users vented their feelings on various social media platforms. 

OpenAI has as many as 100 million weekly users. The outage was admitted by OpenAI. These users were greeted by a message that read, “ChatGPT is at capacity right now” and users were expected to interpret that as a platform crash. It also posted, “We are seeing high error rates across the API and ChatGPT and are actively investigating possible causes.”

Thereafter, a string of reactions in the form of progress reports were provided by OpenAI on its platform culminating in, “Resolved - Between 5:42AM - 7:16AM PT we saw errors impacting all services. We identified the problem and implemented a fix. We are now seeing normal responses from our services”.

However, just yesterday (Monday), the platform had suffered an outage too, but it was partial in nature. The problems had reportedly lasted for hours. OpenAI had initially rolled out this response, “API and ChatGPT continue to have periodic outages – we have implemented a couple mitigations but are still investigating the issue.”

And finally, it provided the all-clear report by posting this message, “This incident has been resolved.”

In the meanwhile, earlier on Monday, AFP reported that ChatGPT maker OpenAI moved to entice developers with lower prices and the ability to easily tailor artificial intelligence "agents" to help with anything from laundry advice to contract negotiations.

"We will be able to do more, to create more, and to have more," Open AI chief executive Sam Altman told developers at a gathering in San Francisco.

"As intelligence is integrated everywhere, we will all have superpowers on demand."

More than 2 million developers are building on the OpenAI platform, while more than 100 million people use ChatGPT weekly, according to the San Francisco-based startup.

"About a year ago, November 30, we shipped ChatGPT as a low-key research preview," Altman said.

"That went pretty well," he quipped.