ChatGPT went down for the second time on June 4 after grappling with a “major outage.” Although the problem seems to have been resolved, the Internet has funny ways of coping with pains well beyond its control.
As OpenAI‘s online resource took a massive hit, many who rely on its powers to frame their narratives also suffered. Users failed to find answers to their queries as the American artificial intelligence company issued its status update about ChatGPT being “unavailable for some users.” While the first round of issues reportedly kicked off around 2:30 am ET, the second followed hours later, just when users presumed they’d made it out of the storm. Downdetector recorded thousands of reports indicating problems at OpenAI.
However, that wasn’t all. Other rival assistants, like Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, were also hit by what appeared to be a case of Tuesday AI blues. A whirlwind of social media comments, tweets, posts and memes opened fire online as endless troops of AI-deficient users voiced their woes about the lack of assistance in their lives. Whatever version of armageddon may fall upon the afflicted, a cathartic meme-off always works its magic as a solid remedy. And so, the Twitterati, now forever surfing the sands of the X land, got to keyboard-smashing.
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Reactions and memes take over as ChatGPT and other AI assistants check out
Despite charting different territories, netizens couldn’t take in the hard-to-swallow motion behind individual AI services’ failure.
Benjamin De Kraker, a full-stack developer at FinalFrame.ai in the US, wrote on his X/Twitter wall: “ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity — three totally different AI services — are all down right now. What the actual F is going on?”
Meanwhile, user @netcapgirl expressed their heartbreak by questioning many others, “You’re laughing? chatgpt, claude and perplexity are all down at the same time and you’re laughing?” Soon, others responded to their distress with comments like, “The world is a lonely place… you’re on your own.”
At the same time, more questionable dilemmas came to the forefront. Someone tweeted, “#ChatGPT is down. What if it never comes back, and we have to use our own brains to write stuff again?” Another similarly-framed gloomy response weighed in on the debilitating correlation between writer’s block (and possibly even mental block) and the severe dependence on AI services: “Noticing you’ve become too dependent on #chatgpt when you are blocked half the because it’s down.”
Other responses took aim at copywriters heavily reliant on the technical magic of AI to tell their stories, “’Dear Sir! I could not finish that content today as my hamster got sick and I had to take it to the doctor.’ Said millions of copywriters today, while refreshing ChatGPT in the browser,” someone quipped.
Taking the cake, another tweet likened the present-day scenario minus ChatGPT to the “middle ages”: “ChatGPT is down which means we are back to the middle ages.”
Proclaimed as an “absolutely nay” situation, a day without ChatGPT brought many down to their knees, fearing the “end of the world.” “Is it the end of the world or something, first ChatGPT is down, and now, for the first time ever, Claude is down too. What is going on?” More grieving comments followed, “We took it for granted, and now it’s gone. You just don’t know what you have until it’s gone. RIP ChatGPT.”
On the other hand, some completely gave up: “Chat GPT is down, I’m not doing any actual thinking, I refuse. I’ll just sit here until it becomes available again.” Yet another worrying post added to the pool for the dearly-missed ChatGPT: “Is chat gpt down? It’s been down the whole day for me. And I’m worried work might noticed I don’t know how to do my job.”
Several others recognised how for granted the modern tool’s existence was to them, and decided to extend their basic courtesy, “Always saying “Thanks!” To ChatGpt JUST IN CASEEEEEEEEEEEE.”
Despite systems being restored earlier, the major outage continued to impact users across all ChatGPT-related services. Even later, it remained unavailable for some users. The official OpenAI status updated, “The impact did not include platform.openai.com or the API. This incident started June 4th at 2:15p GMT and was resolved June 4th at 5:01p GMT.” The website also showed partial outages affecting ChatGPT’s ability to search the internet in May.
Subsequently, theories ensued, as an X user wrote, “My theory for @ChatGPTapp + all AI breakdown. ChatGPT went down first and everyone hopped to Claude which got overloaded, and then to Gemini, and Perplexity and the others. or these LLMs became conscious and unionized before being brokered the deal. pretty plausible right?”
Regardless, the general universal sentiment led many to raise the same question: “How am I supposed to get any work done with ChatGPT being down?”
Source: ChatGPT’s 2nd ‘major outage’ of the day brings Internet ‘back to the middle ages’; meme
