Illustration of OpenAI Outage: What Happened and What's Next?

OpenAI Outage: What Happened and What’s Next?

OpenAI experienced a significant outage affecting its popular services, including ChatGPT, Sora, and its developer-facing API, beginning around 3 PM PT on Wednesday. According to the company’s status updates, the services began to return to normal around 9 PM PT the same day.

In a tweet, OpenAI confirmed the situation, stating, “ChatGPT, API, and Sora were down today but we’ve recovered.” Users attempting to access ChatGPT during the outage encountered messages indicating that the service was unavailable. The company noted they were working diligently to identify and resolve the underlying issues that led to the outage.

This disruption coincided with the launch of OpenAI’s integration into Apple’s iOS 18.2, leading to speculation among users about a connection between the two events. However, Edwin Arbus, the lead for OpenAI’s developer community, clarified that the outage was unrelated to the new features and was instead caused by a configuration change that rendered many servers temporarily unusable.

Additionally, this situation unfolded only days after the public launch of Sora, with reports indicating a surge in demand that exceeded initial capacity, resulting in some users being unable to generate content.

This outage also followed a separate global disruption affecting Meta’s products earlier on the same day, suggesting a turbulent period for tech services overall.

Despite the challenges faced during the “12 Days of OpenAI” event, which features daily product announcements leading up to the holiday season—including the full release of a new reasoning model and enhancements to existing services—OpenAI has shown resilience. The company’s commitment to providing updates and quick resolutions reinforces their dedication to maintaining service integrity and responding to user needs proactively.

With services now back online and as the rollout of exciting new features continues, users can look forward to further improvements and innovations from OpenAI as they navigate these developments.

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