ChatGPT was temporarily offline following an outage that affected users worldwide. According to reports, over 10,000 people in the UK reported issues with the AI chatbot on Thursday. Users who tried to access the service saw an error message stating, “the web server reported a bad gateway error.”
OpenAI later confirmed on its status page that the issue was resolved at 15:09 GMT, and they were monitoring the situation. The cause of the outage, which began around 11:00 GMT, has not been publicly disclosed.
Despite the inconvenience, some social media users found humor in the situation. One user jokingly remarked, “ChatGPT is down again? During the work day? So you’re telling me I have to… THINK?!”
At the time of the outage, ChatGPT’s status page indicated that the service was experiencing “elevated error rates” and the team was working to investigate the problem.
Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has gained massive popularity, sparking widespread interest in generative AI tools. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, reported that by December 2024, ChatGPT would be used by over 300 million people globally each week. While many users access the free version, OpenAI offers premium membership plans costing up to $200 per month.
This outage comes after major tech companies, including OpenAI, committed to investing $500 billion into AI infrastructure in the U.S.