ChatGPT outage major update as OpenAI issues statement to angry users across the world

ChatGPT users reported widespread disruption to OpenAI services late last night - including several users who pay for an enhanced or 'premium' service via subscription

API, ChatGPT, and Sora traffic has now largely recovered after OpenAI suffered severe outages throughout the night. OpenAI, which is well-known for its chatbot ChatGPT, has issued a major update this morning following the technical difficulties thousands of users reported over the last several hours.

Monitoring website DownDetector.com reported 2,483 reports as of 11.42pm last night. Users reported widespread disruption to OpenAI services - including several users who pay for an enhanced or 'premium' service via subscription and businesses who rely on OpenAI’s API for their projects.

OpenAI says it has identified an issue affecting API, ChatGPT and Sora services and work is underway to resolve the disruption - and in the latest update, the company claims it is starting to see things get better. It claims it has now identified a "pathway to recovery" just under two hours since it first acknowledged a problem, and claims some traffic has returned to normal.

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The full update on its website states: "We have identified a pathway to recovery and we are starting to see some success traffic return. Continuing to work to return service to normal." To reassure customers they then added a few minutes later: "We are continuing to work on a fix for this issue."

It was around midnight in the UK - 7pm where OpenAI is based in the US - that reports began. Before long, the outage was significant and affected its API, ChatGPT, and Sora services.

In the online log, OpenAI stated initially: "We have reports of API calls returning errors, and difficulties logging in to platform.openai.com and ChatGPT. We have identified the issue and are working to roll out a fix."

They then said: "ChatGPT, Sora, and the API remain down. We have identified the issue and are rolling out a remediation. We are working as fast as we can to return service to normal and apologize for the downtime."

At 12.15am on Thursday, December 12 an OpenAI engineer shared on social media platform X: "We're experiencing an outage right now. We have identified the issue and are working to roll out a fix. Sorry and we'll keep you updated!"

On Twitter, OpenAI is being bombarded with queries and complaints. One X user wrote: "I was wondering why nothing was loading. Good to know you guys are on top of this. Thank you." Another joked: "Have you guys tried turning it off and on again?"

At 1.15am UK time they confirmed services remain disrupted but confidently state that the issue was identified a while ago and work on a fix is well underway. OpenAI has not provided an estimated time for when services will return to normal, but has promised to keep users updated on any developments.

Shortly after 1.50am OpenAI confirmed 'traffic is partially recovered' uploading the following update to their website: "We are continuing to work towards remediation. API and ChatGPT traffic is partially recovered. Sora remains down."

At around 3am API traffic recovery was going and OpenAI confirmed: "We are continuing to work towards remediation. API traffic recovery is ongoing and we are bringing ChatGPT traffic back up by region. Sora is partially beginning to recover."

The latest update on their website, added shortly after 4.30am states: "API, ChatGPT, and Sora traffic has largely recovered. We are monitoring the situation to ensure full resolution."

No reason for the outage has been given by OpenAI as of yet.