OpenAI has reported a significant outage affecting its popular services, including ChatGPT, Sora, and its developer-facing API, as noted on the company’s status page. This disruption began around 3:17 PM PT on Wednesday, with OpenAI actively investigating the issue. By 4:55 PM PT, the company announced that it had identified a pathway to recovery and was in the process of implementing a fix.
By 7 PM PT, updates indicated that these services were gradually returning online, although the underlying cause of the outage remained unclear. Users attempting to access ChatGPT saw an error message stating, “ChatGPT is currently unavailable,” affirming that the team was addressing the problem.
This outage coincided with the launch of OpenAI’s new integration with Apple for iOS 18.2, which may have led to a surge in traffic on its servers. Some users reported that the ChatGPT service was not functioning within Apple Intelligence due to this downtime.
Adding to the challenges, earlier this week, OpenAI also publicly launched Sora. CEO Sam Altman mentioned that they did not foresee the substantial interest in the platform, resulting in a limitation on sign-ups. Many users who attempted to generate videos on launch day encountered issues, being greeted with messages indicating that servers were at capacity.
The outage comes shortly after a global interruption affecting Meta’s products, though it is unclear if the two incidents are connected.
Interestingly, this service disruption occurs during OpenAI’s “12 days of shipmas” event, a promotional campaign where the company has been unveiling new products each day leading up to the holidays. Recent announcements include the full release of its O1 reasoning model and updates to Canvas, alongside the rollout of the Apple integration and Sora.
OpenAI has stated via its official social media account that they are aware of the outage and are committed to keeping users informed as they work to resolve the issue.
Despite the current setback, the rollout of new features and integrations reflects OpenAI’s ongoing commitment to innovation and user engagement. With rapid improvements in technology and accessibility, it is hopeful that these outages will lead to enhanced service stability in the future, allowing for smoother user experiences moving forward.