On December 26, 2024, a significant outage disrupted ChatGPT services for users across the United States. Many reported difficulties accessing the AI chatbot, which was overloaded, failing to respond to queries, or displaying an ‘internal server error’ message.

The outage appears to have begun at approximately 1:30 PM ET, as indicated by a rise in reports on Down Detector. OpenAI confirmed the situation at around 2 PM ET through a status update that stated ChatGPT, its API, and the text-to-video generator Sora were “currently experiencing high error rates.” A subsequent update at 2:18 PM revealed that the issues stemmed from an “upstream provider” and that OpenAI was actively monitoring the situation.

By 3:06 PM ET, OpenAI communicated that they were “continuing to work on a fix” but did not provide a timeline for restoring services.

This latest disruption is not the first for the platform; earlier incidents have also seen extended periods of downtime. Notably, this follows shortly after the recent release of Sora for ChatGPT subscribers, which coincided with another outage just days after its launch.

The frustrations among users were echoed on various social media platforms, with many taking to websites like Reddit and Twitter to voice their concerns. One user lamented, “Chat gpt down again?” while another pointed out, “How can ChatGPT go down now?” Many users found themselves unable to complete tasks that relied on the service, leading to increased dissatisfaction with the platform amid the technical difficulties.

OpenAI has yet to announce a resolution for these ongoing issues or provide ETAs for service restoration, leaving many users awaiting updates.