In a major service disruption, OpenAI’s popular AI chatbot ChatGPT experienced a widespread outage on Tuesday, leaving users across multiple countries unable to access its core functionalities. The outage began around 2:45 PM IST, peaking shortly thereafter, and affected both web and mobile users globally.
According to data from Downdetector, the incident prompted more than 800 reports in India alone. A breakdown of these complaints showed that 88 per cent were related to ChatGPT’s core operations, with eight per cent highlighting problems with the mobile application, and the remaining four per cent pointing to difficulties with API integration.
The United States also saw a significant rise in outage reports, with over 1,900 users flagging issues around 07:15 PM IST. Of these, 93 per cent reported problems directly tied to ChatGPT, while seven per cent struggled with the app and one per cent noted login failures.
OpenAI responds to widespread disruption
OpenAI acknowledged the disruption and issued a statement at approximately 08:24 PM IST, confirming that mitigation efforts were underway. “We are continuing to work on implementing the mitigation and we are now seeing recovery on API. Full recovery across all listed services may take another few hours. We will continue to provide updates as progress is made,” the company posted on its service status page.
Earlier in the day, OpenAI had confirmed the outage was affecting multiple services, including ChatGPT, its APIs, and Sora—the company’s video-generation tool. The firm said that some users were facing increased error rates and delays while using these services and that a full investigation was ongoing.
As of now, no estimated time of resolution has been provided, and OpenAI has not disclosed the root cause of the issue. The lack of clarity has added to user frustration, particularly among those who rely on the platform for academic work, professional tasks, and personal assistance.
The disruption has sparked a flurry of reactions on social media, with many users airing their grievances. One user on X, @pathray_ri77258, shared a satirical post: “When @ChatGPT is so overworked it can’t even finish your message… Today, many users (myself included) are facing errors in the message stream. Is @OpenAI having a burnout day? The fun part? I asked #ChatGPT to write this tweet about its own crash. Self-awareness level: 🤖”
Notably, the outage is one of the most significant incidents to impact OpenAI’s services in recent months.
