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Access to ChatGPT is currently in the process of being restored after encountering a disruption on Thursday afternoon. Sora, the API, and ChatGPT were all impacted by an issue with an “upstream provider,” as confirmed by OpenAI.
During Thursday afternoon, a significant number of users found ChatGPT to be non-functional. The chatbot abruptly stopped responding to queries, and some users were met with an “internal server error” message.
The disruption began around 1:30 PM ET, coinciding with a notable increase in reports on Down Detector. An update was posted by OpenAI on its website at 2 PM ET, indicating that ChatGPT, the API, and Sora, its text-to-video generator, were experiencing “high error rates.”
As of 6:15 PM ET, OpenAI announced that Sora had been fully restored and APIs were beginning to recover. However, a comprehensive solution for resolving the issues with ChatGPT and its APIs was still being actively worked on.
Microsoft, the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI, reported a “power issue” at one of its datacenters that occurred around the same time as the problems faced by OpenAI, impacting North America. Furthermore, issues with Xbox cloud gaming were also reported. The specific “upstream provider” linked to the issue was not disclosed.
A message regarding the “power incident” in the South Central US was shared with affected customers at 18:44 UTC on December 26, 2024. Mitigation measures were put in place, and recovery efforts for the affected services were underway.
Microsoft declared that the impacted datacenter had been fully restored to power shortly after 5 p.m. Eastern Time, providing a sense of relief to individuals affected by the outage.
In recent months, ChatGPT has experienced sporadic downtime. Following the introduction of Sora to ChatGPT subscribers by OpenAI earlier in the month, both the video generation functionality and ChatGPT faced an extended period of downtime. Additionally, in June, ChatGPT experienced a widespread outage affecting various AI tools.
As of the latest update on December 26th, Microsoft and OpenAI are actively working on resolving the issues and restoring full functionality to ChatGPT and its associated services. Users are encouraged to stay informed through official channels for further developments on the restoration progress.
