New York: Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT, one of the world’s most widely used AI chatbots, was restored on Friday after a brief service outage impacted thousands of users. The company confirmed the issue in a statement, noting, “Issues with ChatGPT have now been resolved.”
According to OpenAI, access was largely restored by 4:34 p.m. PT (0034 GMT on Saturday), though a few users continued to experience difficulties until around 5 p.m. (0100 GMT on Saturday). CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the disruption on X (formerly Twitter), remarking that ChatGPT had been down for approximately 30 minutes. Accompanying his message with a frown emoji, Altman added, “We are much, much better at reliability than we used to be, but clearly more work in front of us.”
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The outage affected more than 19,400 users, according to Downdetector.com, which tracked reports of the disruption starting around 7:13 p.m. ET (0013 GMT on Saturday).
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Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has rapidly grown to attract 250 million weekly active users, fueling OpenAI’s rise in valuation from $14 billion in 2021 to an impressive $157 billion. The company’s revenue has also surged to $3.6 billion, far outpacing initial projections by Altman.
