Today, users from different countries began to massively report the unavailability of the world’s most famous artificial intelligence tool, ChatGPT. Downdetector, a service that monitors website outages, has recorded more than 10,000 reports of chatbot problems in the UK alone. Users who tried to open the web version or application of the chatbot saw the message “The web server reported a gateway error.”
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Users reacted differently to the chatbot failure. Some of them reported inconveniences and problems, while many took ChatGPT’s unavailability rather lightly. “ChatGPT not working again? During the working day? So you’re telling me that I should… THINK?!” one of the users of the social network X ironically commented on the situation.
The failure began around 14:00 Moscow time and lasted for several hours. At the time of publication of this note, the functionality of the service has begun to return, but reports of problems are still being received. On the ChatGPT status page, OpanAI stated that it had investigated the incident, identified the cause of the problem and had already fixed it.
OpenAI chief Sam Altman said in December that ChatGPT is used by more than 300 million people worldwide every week. Many people use a limited free version of the chatbot; commercial plans cost up to $200.
The massive ChatGPT outage comes as tech companies, including OpenAI, are promising a combined $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure in the United States.