During the week marked by upheaval at OpenAI, the tech company’s AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, encountered a widespread outage on a Tuesday afternoon, leaving users grappling with error messages and disrupted services.
As per reports from Down Detector, an online outage tracker, the platform began registering a surge in errors around 2 p.m. PT, causing inconvenience to numerous ChatGPT users.
Identified Issue and Ongoing Fixes
OpenAI promptly acknowledged the issue on its status site, pinpointing the problem as affecting crucial “non-completion API endpoints.” The company assured its users that the identified issue was related to complications with their database replicas and that efforts were underway to resolve the underlying problem.
Responding to inquiries from Business Insider, an OpenAI spokesperson highlighted a tweet from a developer relations employee, acknowledging the increased error rates and assuring users that the team was actively working towards a solution.
Confirmation of Downtime
Business Insider independently verified the bot’s downtime by engaging ChatGPT in various queries, only to receive error responses redirecting users to the help center at help.openai.com for assistance.
Notably, outages are not uncommon for the AI chatbot, often occurring during the implementation of new features. In a peculiar turn of events, OpenAI had announced a version of ChatGPT that would respond to voice commands around 3 p.m. ET, preceding the outage.
OpenAI’s Internal Challenges
This recent disruption adds to a series of challenges faced by ChatGPT, including a prior outage earlier in the month. The company disclosed that the previous interruption stemmed from a targeted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which overwhelmed their systems, resulting in service unavailability.
In the backdrop of these technical setbacks, OpenAI has been embroiled in internal turmoil, particularly the departure of CEO Sam Altman. While details surrounding Altman’s departure remain elusive, reports suggest the possibility of the tech mogul considering a return to OpenAI despite the company’s board not offering complete transparency regarding the reasons for his exit.
The recent tumultuous events, ranging from executive departures to technical challenges, signify a challenging phase for OpenAI and its flagship product, ChatGPT. Despite these setbacks, OpenAI continues to navigate these challenges, striving to restore functionality and improve user experiences amidst ongoing company changes.
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