ChatGPT experiences widespread outage

ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot, experienced a significant outage, leaving many users unable to access the service.

Visitors to the website encountered error pages instead of the usual chat interface, and in some regions, the platform failed to load entirely.

While the cause of the issue remains unclear, OpenAI’s official status page reported "elevated error rates" and confirmed that the company is actively investigating the problem. Users attempting to access the platform received messages citing a "bad gateway error."

The disruption began around 11:00 GMT on Thursday and persisted, with users continuing to report difficulties accessing the service.

Many took to social media to highlight the inconvenience and the impact on their work.

OpenAI, which offers free and paid versions of ChatGPT with subscription plans costing up to $200 per month, acknowledged the issue. The company's status update noted elevated error rates in the API as a contributing factor.

ChatGPT has grown immensely popular, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealing in December that over 300 million people use the chatbot weekly.