On Thursday, December 26, there was a major outage that prevented users from using OpenAI’s well-known AI platforms, ChatGPT and Sora, for hours. Users all throughout the globe were frustrated when the outage, which started at roughly 11 AM PT and was fixed later that day, occurred.

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused, but the majority of ChatGPT, the API, and Sora have been unavailable for a few hours. The problem has been located, and the recovery process has begun. During the downtime, OpenAI said on X (previously Twitter): “We hope to be back ASAP.”

According to Downdetector, 8% of the complaints mentioned difficulties with OpenAI’s website, while 88% of the reports dealt with ChatGPT access issues. Error messages such as “internal server errors” and unprocessed prompts were reported by users. Some were able to get the chatbot to load, but its features didn’t work. The outage impacted developers using ChatGPT’s API in apps as well as users depending on the service for business and education.

Additionally affected was Sora, OpenAI’s video production tool for ChatGPT Plus users. After some initial interruptions, everything was completely functional by 6:15 PM ET. Nevertheless, ChatGPT and its API’s recovery procedure took into the evening. Service restoration was subsequently verified by OpenAI, which said, “ChatGPT is mostly recovered, and we are continuing to work on an overall fix.”

Although specifics were not provided, OpenAI’s status page said that “high error rates” associated with one of its upstream suppliers were the primary cause of the problem. Online conjecture sprang from this ambiguity, with some blaming OpenAI’s dependence on cloud infrastructure—specifically, Microsoft’s services—for the downtime. Users vented their displeasure and offered theories regarding the technical issue on X.

This event was ChatGPT’s second major outage during the month of December. Due to a telemetry service exceeding OpenAI’s hardware resources, there was a six-hour downtime earlier in the month. The difficulties in ensuring dependability for highly sought-after AI services were highlighted by the December 26 outage. OpenAI is still striving to resolve these issues with the least amount of disturbance to its user base worldwide.