Posted on 06/10/25
| News Source: JPost
ChatGPT users around the world faced widespread problems on Tuesday morning as the popular AI chatbot displayed error messages instead of its usual responses.
The outage began around 10:00 a.m. Israel time, and affected millions of users across multiple continents. Instead of getting answers, users saw messages like "Hmm... something seems to have gone wrong" and "A network error occurred."
Both free users and ChatGPT Plus subscribers paying $20 per month were hit by the problems, showing the technical difficulties affected all service levels.
DownDetector, which tracks internet service outages, recorded over 1,350 user reports about the problems. India alone saw around 800 complaints, with similar numbers in other countries. Social media users confirmed the global nature of the disruption.
The problems weren't limited to ChatGPT. Sora, OpenAI's new text-to-video tool, also experienced similar issues. The company's API systems, which let developers integrate AI technology into their apps, were also affected.
OpenAI confirmed the problems on its official status page, saying some users were experiencing "elevated error rates and latency" across its services. The company said it was "continuing to investigate this issue" but didn't give a timeline for fixing it.
The outage affected users differently. Some could access ChatGPT but found it much slower than usual. Others couldn't use the service at all, while a few reported no problems. It appears more advanced AI models were hit harder, while basic versions kept working but slowly.
This is the latest in a series of recent outages that have affected ChatGPT in recent months. Similar problems occurred in December, January, and March.
Social media, especially X/Twitter, quickly filled with memes and reactions. One popular post read: "ChatGPT is down and I'm mid-flight piloting a plane with no idea how to land it. If you see a plane going down, send help."
Another widely shared message said: "Everyone running to Twitter to check if ChatGPT is down for anyone else," while users posted images captioned "Corporate employees and students worldwide right now."
The social media reactions showed how dependent users have become on the service. Many admitted they weren't sure how to do basic tasks without the chatbot. Some said the outage was a good chance to try competing services like Grok or Gemini.
OpenAI hasn't said when normal service will return. The company is telling users to wait patiently and avoid repeatedly trying to refresh the service, which could make server problems worse.