ChatGPT Is Down! Users Report 'Unusual Activity Detected' Error Amid Global Outage; OpenAI Issues Statement

San Francisco (US): OpenAI's popular artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, faced major disruptions for thousands of users across the globe on Wednesday. Reports flooded in on DownDetector, a platform monitoring online service outages, indicating a widespread inability to access the AI service.

Over 3,400 users in the US had reported issues with ChatGPT earlier on Tuesday afternoon (local time). Users attempting to engage with the chatbot were met with frustrating messages such as 'unusual error detected' and found themselves unable to load their chat history, disrupting workflows and daily tasks for many reliant on the AI tool.

According to reports citing DownDetector's data, the outage primarily affected the chatbot's core functionality, with 82 per cent of reports related to ChatGPT itself, 12 per cent concerning the website, and 6 per cent impacting the mobile application.

Meanwhile, social media is flooded with complaints from multiple users of the AI platform. Many have complained about the outage while several others have shared funny memes about the situation.

OpenAI Issues Statement

OpenAI quickly acknowledged the incident, issuing a statement on its service status page confirming that 'users are experiencing elevated levels of errors.' The company specified that its record mode, along with other services like Sora and Codex, were also encountering problems.

While OpenAI has identified the issue and is actively investigating, a definitive root cause, whether a server overload, software bug or other technical malfunction, has not yet been publicly confirmed, nor has an estimated time for full restoration been provided. The company stated that a mitigation effort would be implemented soon.

Meanwhile, OpenAI has advised users to avoid repeated login attempts, as this could potentially trigger security locks. Users are encouraged to monitor the official OpenAI status page for real-time updates on the restoration progress. Furthermore, the company recommends saving any ongoing work externally to mitigate the risk of data loss during these service interruptions.