On Wednesday, December 11, OpenAI experienced a major outage that took down ChatGPT, its API, and the newly launched Sora service, leaving many users unable to access these popular platforms. The outage began at 3pm PT and was largely resolved by 9pm PT, according to updates from OpenAI’s status page.
During the outage, users visiting ChatGPT.com encountered an error message stating, “ChatGPT is currently unavailable.” The message also assured users that OpenAI had identified the issue and was working on a fix. The downtime coincided with a major integration of ChatGPT with Apple’s iOS 18.2, which reportedly affected some users attempting to use Apple Intelligence.
OpenAI’s developer community lead, Edwin Arbus, clarified on X (formerly Twitter) that the outage was caused by a configuration change that affected several servers, and was unrelated to the ongoing 12 Days of OpenAI event, where the company has been unveiling new products each day. Although the cause remains unclear, OpenAI confirmed that services began to come back online by 7pm PT, with full recovery by the evening.
The outage comes on the heels of Sora’s public launch, where OpenAI had to limit sign-ups due to unexpectedly high demand. Many users who registered for Sora, a new video generation tool, were unable to access the platform during the launch, receiving a “server at capacity” error.
This service interruption also follows a global disruption to Meta’s products on the same day. For OpenAI, this outage marked a significant interruption during its “12 Days of OpenAI” event, which has included major product announcements such as the o1 reasoning model and updates to Canvas.
Despite the technical difficulties, OpenAI has assured users that the services are now up and running. The company remains committed to addressing any lingering issues.
For more details on the outage and OpenAI’s latest developments, check out the full story on TechCrunch.
