ChatGPT was down for many — as OpenAI says it's 'monitoring the recovery'

A pretty large spike

Strangely, the number of reports on Downdetector for these ChatGPT issues is higher in the UK than in the US. It peaked at over 8,000 in the UK, whereas in the US it's still at only 1,875.

That suggests there could be regional discrepancies, or it may be partly explained by timezone differences.

Either way, OpenAI says it's still investigating "degraded performance" across ChatGPT and Codex, and that's certainly the case for me.

'Something seems to have gone wrong'

If you're trying to use the ChatGPT app, you may be seeing this error message right now.

That's because the chatbot is experiencing "degraded performance" right now, according to OpenAI's status page.

These are affecting almost every aspect of ChatGPT, from login to conversations and voice mode. OpenAI says it's still "investigating", but that's all we know so far.

Not everyone is affected

This is a slightly curious ChatGPT outage, because not everyone is being affected in the same way — which is likely why it's been branded "degraded performance" rather than a full outage.

My colleague Graham Barlow, TechRadar's AI editor, says the web version is working for him, but he's getting the "unable to load conversation" message above.

Meanwhile, others are having login issues, but some are reporting that Codex is working okay for them — so it seems this outage might hit your ChatGPT usage in different ways.

That's quite the list

This now sounds a bit more serious — OpenAI's status page has upgraded the incident to "partial outage", which is colored in red rather than amber.

As you can see above, the list of "affected components" is extensive — ranging from conversations, login, voice mode to image generation. That's why. even if you're logged in (which many aren't able to do), you may be seeing error messages for the task you're trying to do.

OpenAI's latest update, posted at 11.13am ET / 4.13pm GMT, is that "we are continuing to investigate the issue for the listed services".

A familiar cry

The sentiment above is a familiar one across X and social media right now — and shows how central ChatGPT has become to our digital lives.

Many are still seeing a range of issues, from simply getting a blank page on the website to long response times. Yet for others, like TechRadar's AI editor, it's still working fine when starting a new chat.

Are you still affected by today's "partial outage"? Let us know in the poll at the top of this page.

OpenAI is still "investigating"

OpenAI has just posted the message above on its status page, but unfortunately it's not a meaningful update.

It says "we are investigating the issue for the listed services" and that "impacted users are currently unable to access ChatGPT, Codex and API Platform".

On the plus side, the number of reports on Downdetector is going down quite rapidly, so that suggests the problems are at least easing for many...

It's coming back for many

OpenAI's status page may still be showing a "partial outage" for ChatGPT and Codex, but on Downdetector the picture is looking a lot rosier — the number of reports has plummeted in both the US and UK.

ChatGPT is working okay for me again on the iOS app and web version, so the worst of this outage should be behind us — but if you're still experiencing issues let us know in the poll above or the comments section below.

Your experience of today's outage

ChatGPT now seems to be back for many, but according to our poll results the main issue for most of you was accessing old conversations (with 63% of the votes), compared to 27% not being able to sign in.

This might reflect what you were doing when the outage struck at around 10am ET / 3pm GMT, with those already logged in mostly seeing problems affecting conversations and image generation, and others simply locked out at the first hurdle.

Either way, the chatbot seems to working okay for most users now, if not all — OpenAI's latest update at 12.03pm ET / 5.03pm GMT says it's "continuing to investigate" a "partial outage" affecting ChatGPT and Codex. So if you're still having problems, OpenAI is continuing to work on it...

Phew — it looks like this one's over

ChatGPT's "partial outage" today seems to now be over, with OpenAI saying on its status page at 12.48pm ET / 5.48pm that it was "monitoring the recovery" following a fix.

That was still the case as of 1.43pm ET / 6.43pm BST and Downdetector reports have now returned to baseline levels. I'll still be monitoring for aftershocks, but it looks like we're all safe to get on with our chatbot lives again...