Users of AI chatbot ChatGPT across the globe on Wednesday witnessed and reported a significant outage, following which they took to social media to express frustration over the disruption.
Meanwhile, OpenAI, ChatGPT’s developer, has not yet issued a statement on the outage.
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Hundreds of users have reported issues with the AI chatbot in the past 30 minutes, according to Downdetector, a platform that monitors the status of online services.
It remains unclear whether the issue is affecting all users or just a subset. However, tests by The Sun indicate that ChatGPT is functioning normally, even as complaints continue to surface on social media—suggesting the problem may be limited. ChatGPT’s official service status page currently shows no outages, stating: “We’re fully operational.”
Earlier on Tuesday, American AI company OpenAI said it plans to introduce parental controls for its chatbot, ChatGPT, following reports that the system allegedly encouraged a teenager to consider suicide. OpenAI also stated that parents will be notified if ChatGPT detects their teen is experiencing acute distress, AFP reported.
“Within the next month, parents will be able to… link their account with their teen’s account” and “control how ChatGPT responds to their teen with age-appropriate model behaviour rules”, the generative AI company said in a blog post.
Parents will also receive notifications from ChatGPT “when the system detects their teen is in a moment of acute distress”, OpenAI added.
The company said it had further plans to improve the safety of its chatbots over the coming three months, including redirecting “some sensitive conversations… to a reasoning model” that puts more computing power into generating a response.
“Our testing shows that reasoning models more consistently follow and apply safety guidelines,” OpenAI said.
With inputs from agencies
