ChatGPT suffered a global outage on Thursday, leaving many people unable to access OpenAI’s popular AI chatbot as complaints spread quickly across social media and outage-tracking platforms. Users reported a range of problems, including trouble logging in and the bot failing to respond to prompts.
The ChatGPT outage drew early attention as users posted about the disruption on X, while Downdetector data showed a sharp rise in reports. OpenAI did not publish an official statement explaining the cause or scope of the outage, according to NDTV.
What users reported during the outage
Many users turned to X to say ChatGPT was not working, and the volume of posts suggested the issue was affecting people across multiple countries. NDTV reported that Downdetector showed thousands of users were impacted and that the number of reports continued to climb as more people experienced issues.
Reports varied by user, with some saying they could not log in while others said ChatGPT would not respond to commands. NDTV also cited Downdetector reporting that nearly 90% of affected users flagged problems with the ChatGPT app, while others reported trouble on the website.
Alongside the complaints, NDTV described a wave of memes and jokes posted to X during the disruption. One user, quoted by NDTV, said losing access to ChatGPT for 20 minutes felt like “it was 2015 and Google Search had gone offline for a couple of hours.”
What outage trackers and OpenAI’s status updates showed
Tom’s Guide reported that outage reports began appearing on DownDetector and on social media around 7 a.m. ET (12 p.m. GMT), with impacts noted in the U.S., the U.K., and other regions. Tom’s Guide also said it was able to reproduce the problem in London, where ChatGPT’s desktop experience failed to load.
During the outage, Tom’s Guide reported that OpenAI’s status page indicated “elevated error rates” and said the company was “currently investigating.” NDTV, however, said OpenAI had not shared an official statement on the cause or the extent of the disruption.
There were also mixed signals about whether service had fully returned for everyone at the same time. NDTV included a post stating service had been restored, but it also said ChatGPT was still down at the time its report was filed.
Not the first disruption for ChatGPT
NDTV reported that the February outage was not the first time ChatGPT has run into technical issues. It pointed to a similar global disruption on January 23 that prevented users from accessing ChatGPT on both the web and the app.
In that earlier disruption, NDTV said Downdetector recorded more than a thousand complaints and that users again took to X to discuss the problem. The repeated disruptions highlight how quickly user frustration can spread when a widely used online service becomes unreliable, especially when it is used for tasks like assignments and everyday queries, as reflected in the user posts NDTV quoted.
What happened next
As the outage unfolded, users continued monitoring access and posting updates online as they tried to confirm whether ChatGPT was working again. Tom’s Guide continued to track the incident in real time while noting that OpenAI was investigating elevated error rates shown on its status page.
For people affected by the ChatGPT outage, the most visible signs were login failures, non-responsive outputs, and loading issues across the web and app experiences, according to the reports summarized by NDTV and Tom’s Guide.
