OpenAI's ChatGPT crashes, affecting millions of users worldwide

OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT has crashed, leaving users worldwide struggling to make use of the platform.

More than 1,000 reports had been submitted by users having difficulty accessing ChatGPT by 1.31pm Abu Dhabi time, said Downdetector, which logs website and app crashes. The crash started at 11am, according to the platform.

OpenAI has acknowledged the issue on its status page, stating: “Some users are experiencing elevated error rates and latency across the listed services.”

It added that both ChatGPT and its image generation AI tool, Sora, are down.

“We are continuing to investigate the issue for the listed services,” the tech giant added.

The outage is affecting both free-tier users and ChatGPT Plus subscribers.

Users reported error messages on X stating “something went wrong” and that they are stuck on the “searching the web” command – a newer feature powered by OpenAI’s real-time web browsing tool called “SearchGPT.”

Every week, more than a hundred million people use ChatGPT, according to 2024 figures.

For many, the platform has become an useful tool for everything from writing and coding to planning trips, generating images, and even helping with job applications.

Its popularity has skyrocketed across industries, with companies increasingly integrating the tool into their workflows to boost productivity.

Last week, OpenAI announced that it now has three million paying business users, up from two million in February. These users include customers of ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Team, and ChatGPT Edu, the company said.

With such widespread reliance, problems like that of June 10 could significantly disrupt operations, slow down workflows, and impact productivity for businesses across sectors.

Some users also rely on ChatGPT for mental health journaling, making the disruption particularly hard on a broad range of needs.

This is not the first time OpenAI’s services have experienced disruptions.

In past incidents, users have faced outages due to server overload, software bugs, or external attacks.

A notable incident in March 2023 exposed snippets of other users’ chat histories due to a bug in the platform’s back end infrastructure.

While June 10's issue appears to be affecting multiple services, including Sora, OpenAI has yet to confirm the exact cause of the outage or provide a timeline for full restoration.

Amid the chaos, ChatGPT users have made light of the crash with humorous posts that have been widely shared across X.

One user posted pictures of Disney's Inside Out character Riley looking distraught, with the caption: “How life feels when ChatGPT is down.”

Another user shared a clip of several men collapsed on the ground, joking that this represents corporate employees everywhere – highlighting just how heavily workplaces rely on ChatGPT.