ChatGPT is down for many — here’s what we know about the outage

(Image credit: Future)

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.

(Image credit: Downdetector)

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.

(Image credit: OpenAI / Future)

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.

(Image credit: OpenAI / Future)

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.

(Image credit: OpenAI / Future)

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.

(Image credit: OpenAI / Apple)

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

(Image credit: Downdetector)