ChatGPT DOWN as thousands of users hit by error messages due to mysterious OpenAI outage

CHATGPT appears to be suffering from a mysterious outage leaving frustrated users with random error messages.

A surge in reports was picked up by Down Detector, with more than 1,400 complaints in the UK and over 1,000 in the US.

It’s not clear whether the problems are widespread or limited to some users.

The error message reads: “A network error occurred.

“Please check your connection and try again. If this issue persists please contact us through our help center at help.openai.com.”

Meanwhile, others have reported a reply that says: “Hmm.. something seems to have gone wrong.”

People have taken to social media to try to find out what’s going on with the popular platform, which is thought to have some 400million weekly users.

“ChatGPT, my work buddy, is down again,” one person fumed on X.

“Apparently Chatgpt is down globally. I thought my internet was glitching,” another commented.

ChatGPT owner OpenAI has spoken out about the issue, saying it is investigating.

Problems appear to have started at 9am BST.

“Some users are experiencing elevated error rates and latency across the listed services,” the firm’s service status page says.

“We are investigating.”

WHY DO OUTAGES HAPPEN?

By Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Science Editor at The Sun

Outages seem to happen more often these days what with us so dependent on the many apps and digital services on offer.

Reasons behind them can vary widely.

Usually it’s down to an internal error, such as a bungled update that didn’t go to plan.

These can be minor and reversed within minutes or a couple of hours.

But bigger outages can go on for days and cause mayhem, such as the big CrowdStrike tech issue that plunged the world into chaos.

Other more serious reasons can be cyber attacks.

Bad actors love a DDoS attack, where they bombard a service with so many requests that it struggles to work for anyone.

2