OpenAI reported a significant outage affecting its services, including ChatGPT, the developer API, and Sora, starting around 3 PM PT on Wednesday. The company announced that by 9 PM PT, the services had largely resumed functioning, confirming recovery via a tweet.
Throughout the outage, users attempting to access ChatGPT faced error messages indicating that the service was unavailable. OpenAI updated their status page, noting that the services began to come back online around 7 PM PT. The root cause of the outage is still uncertain; however, OpenAI’s developer community lead, Edwin Arbus, clarified that a configuration change led to the unavailability of many servers, and assured that the issues were unrelated to their recently launched integrations with Apple.
This incident coincided with the rollout of OpenAI’s integration with Apple in iOS 18.2, leading to some confusion among users who experienced service disruptions within Apple Intelligence. Just prior to this, OpenAI had publicly launched Sora, which saw a surge of interest. Due to the unexpected demand, the startup had to restrict user sign-ups, limiting access for many who wished to utilize the service.
Interestingly, this outage was noted to occur during OpenAI’s “12 Days of OpenAI” event, which has been showcasing new products daily in anticipation of the holiday season. This initiative has already featured updates to their core offerings, including the full release of their o1 reasoning model, a new reinforcement fine-tuning research program, and enhanced integration with Apple Intelligence.
Despite the challenges posed by the outage, OpenAI has made commendable efforts to address the technical issues and restore service promptly. As technology evolves, such incidents serve as a reminder of the complexities and operational challenges faced by high-demand platforms, while also highlighting the resilience and adaptability of service providers.
In summary, OpenAI experienced a significant outage of its services on Wednesday, affecting a large number of users. However, the company has quickly worked to recover and restore functionality, reinforcing their commitment to serve their audience effectively.