OpenAI has announced that it has resolved the recent issues affecting ChatGPT’s conversation history feature, which had left many users concerned about lost data. According to an update on July 31, all impacted services have fully recovered, and OpenAI plans to release a detailed Root Cause Analysis (RCA) within the next five business days.
The outage, which occurred on July 30, left users frustrated as many reported that important conversations appeared to be missing. One user expressed dismay on Reddit, stating, “I’ve closed ChatGPT for a minute and opened it again, only to find three months of data is gone!” Another user lamented the loss of saved conversations, highlighting how integral this feature is for referencing previous chats and maintaining thematic continuity in discussions.
OpenAI confirmed the issue shortly after noon ET on July 30 and managed to deploy a fix by 3:24 p.m. ET, as indicated by their status tracker. Downdetector revealed a significant spike in user-reported problems around 10:30 a.m. ET, signifying the breadth of the outage.
Conversation history is a vital functionality within the ChatGPT interface, as it allows users to revisit and continue discussions on various topics. While most users report high reliability, the problem raised questions about whether it was due to a design flaw or a complete loss of data, with some noting they only experienced issues on desktop devices.
OpenAI typically reports a high uptime rate of 99.55% across its services, with conversation history boasting an impressive 99.81% uptime, making this outage a rare occurrence. While OpenAI has not yet commented on the issue through its social media channels, they are actively monitoring the situation and have committed to providing further updates.
Overall, this incident serves as a reminder of the importance of maintaining robust features in cloud-based applications and the reliance users place on these systems for continuity in their digital communications.