OpenAI’s popular AI services, ChatGPT and Sora, experienced a significant outage on Thursday afternoon, leaving users unable to access the platforms. Reports of the disruption began surfacing on social media platforms like Reddit around 1:30 p.m. ET, with a corresponding spike in reports on Down Detector.
OpenAI officially acknowledged the outage in a blog post at 2 p.m. ET, stating they were “experiencing an issue with high error rates on ChatGPT, the API, and Sora” and were actively investigating the cause. A subsequent update just 18 minutes later attributed the problem to an “upstream provider” and assured users that they were monitoring the situation. As of 3 p.m. ET, OpenAI confirmed they were still working on a resolution, but no estimated time of restoration was provided.
OpenAI and ChatGPT logos are marked do not enter with a red circle and line symbol.
This is not the first time OpenAI’s services have faced such disruptions. In June, a widespread outage affected ChatGPT along with other prominent AI platforms like Google Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and Perplexity. Earlier in December, shortly after its launch to Plus and Pro subscribers, the Sora video generation model encountered “technical difficulties.” In both instances, OpenAI resolved the issues within a few hours.
This latest outage follows closely on the heels of OpenAI’s “12 Days of OpenAI” event, which showcased a series of new product releases and feature updates. These included the full version of their o1 reasoning model (and a preview of its successor, o3), the Sora text-to-video model, and enhancements to Canvas and Advanced Voice Mode.
This incident highlights the reliance on third-party infrastructure within the AI landscape and underscores the potential for disruptions even with leading AI providers. Users are encouraged to monitor OpenAI’s official channels for further updates on service restoration.
