ChatGPT is down — latest updates on major OpenAI outage

I asked ChatGPT “are you working?” about 20 minutes ago and it still hasn’t responded. I think I would prefer some kind of error message. That’s more definitive than a pulsing black dot that perpetually stays on the screen.

Also, it’s amusing that it says “ChatGPT can make mistakes” on the bottom. Is not working for a bunch of hours a mistake? Okay, that’s mean, but I find it funny.

Tom’s Guide Global Editor in Chief, Mark Spoonauer, caught something pretty amusing over on X.

As we posted earlier in this live blog, people are now flocking to ChatGPT alternatives. It’s no surprise that #GoogleGemini is now trending on X. One company’s loss is another’s gain, I guess!

A user on DownDetector shares their experience. Though you’re able to submit a request on ChatGPT, responses fail to generate. You’ll get a pulsing black dot instead of a proper response.

X (formerly Twitter) users are still discussing ChatGPT being down. While some are legitimately frustrated, some (like the user posted above) are trying to make light of the situation.

Still, if you rely on ChatGPT for work, I’m sure you’re having a crappy Monday. Hopefully, this recent outage hasn’t caused any severe problems for anyone.

As of 4:15 p.m., it’s still not working for me, but it looks like it’s trying. When I type in a query — in this case, “are you working?” I get a pulsing black dot for a while, before it falls back to an error message. 

Gemini, Claude 3, and Perplexity all seem to be working fine, though.

How to do a hard reset on ChatGPT

Even when ChatGPT’s service is restored, it still may be necessary for you to perform a hard reset to get it working properly. Here’s what you need to know:

Mac:
On Chrome or Firefox: Press Cmd + Shift + R
On Safari: Press Cmd + Option + R

PC:
Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge: Press Ctrl + F5

Mobile devices:

Manually clear the cache and reload the page as expected.

Update (4 p.m. ET): ChatGPT is still down. It looked like it was starting to recover a bit, but progress seems to have stalled. The DownDetector comments section is getting a bit spicy now, too.

“How am i going to attempt to use chat gpt to create policy violating stories for me if the Ai is down,” wrote ThunderChannel 100. 

“I asked chatgpt when will chatgpt be fixed. Still waiting for an answer,” David wrote.

What is ChatGPT? For those of you who have somehow clicked on this story and are wondering what all the fuss is about, ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that can do everything from writing papers to creating images, just based on text prompts you enter. While it launched in 2022, it’s gained a lot of popularity as one of the leading AIs in the past year, as companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Apple have rushed to incorporate artificial intelligence into their products. 

Based on the company’s own logs, ChatGPT has had at least one significant outage a month dating back to March. Some have been as short as 30 minutes, but others have lasted upwards of eight hours. 

Our Global Editor in Chief Mark Spoonauer is really digging the very minimalist interface on ChatGPT right now. No history. No answers to your queries. You can just sit and think about what AI could do for you.

The last time ChatGPT went down, traffic to a number of the best ChatGPT alternatives shot up, and as a result, those services struggled with the increased load. Claude from Anthropic and Perplexity all had their troubles; we’re going to monitor them as well to see if they’re affected by this latest ChatGPT outage.

People have also taken to Threads to complain about ChatGPT’s outage. “I think ChatGPT has been playing too much Football Manager,” wrote asherwood21.

Not surprisingly, many have taken to social media to voice their complaints. 

This one tweet from @Egocrata on X sums up the frustration of many ChatGPT users. “ChatGPT would be MUCH more useful if the damn stupid thing was not down half of the time.You cannot rely on it at all.”

The comments on DownDetector paint a pretty bad picture on the latest ChatGPT outage. One user ANA says,  “I just used perplexity its way better then this trash.”

Just last week, OpenAI and Apple announced a partnership, whereby ChatGPT would be integrated into Apple’s own AI platform, dubbed Apple Intelligence, in iOS 18. In this implementation, much of the processing will be done on-device, before going to Apple’s servers.

ChatGPT went offline for around four hours on June 4, until engineers were able to fix the issue, but noted that some users would have to do a “hard refresh” to get the service working again. 

As we wait for it to come back — again — it’s worth checking out our guide to ChatGPT alternatives — including Claude 3 and MetaAI.

The reports of OpenAI going down seem to have started around 2 p.m. EST, according to DownDetector. 

About 40 minutes later, a status update on OpenAI noted “We are currently investigating elevated error rates impacting ChatGPT.”