OpenAI and Meta experience widespread service failures

Microsoft-backed OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT appeared to hit a digital pause on Thursday morning, leaving millions of users stranded mid-conversation.

The disruption also spilled over to OpenAI's API and Sora video generator platform, causing ripples across businesses and tech-dependent operations worldwide.

Acknowledging the issue on social media, OpenAI shared, “We’re experiencing an outage right now. We have identified the issue and are working to roll out a fix. Sorry and we’ll keep you updated!”

In a subsequent update, OpenAI announced progress toward recovery, stating on its website, “We have identified a pathway to recovery, and we are starting to see some traffic successfully return. Continuing to work to return service to normal.”

Outage tracking site Downdetector reported over 2,400 disruptions early Thursday, with users facing degraded performance, slow logins, or complete inaccessibility.

Subscribers to the premium GPTPro service were among those affected, sparking frustration across personal and professional user bases.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has previously acknowledged similar outages, including a notable disruption on November 8, when ChatGPT was unavailable for 30 minutes, impacting over 19,000 users. Addressing the incident, Altman tweeted: "We’re much better at reliability than we used to be, but there’s still a lot more work to do."

OpenAI’s systems also faced a five-hour outage in June. Despite these challenges, ChatGPT’s popularity has surged since its launch in November 2022, boasting 250 million weekly active users. OpenAI’s valuation skyrocketed from $14 billion in 2021 to $157 billion in 2024, with annual revenues reaching $3.6 billion.

Earlier this month, Altman highlighted the platform’s growing influence, sharing, “Our technology is now reaching 300 million active users each week.”

Meta Platforms Global Outages

Meta’s social media platforms—WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook also suffered outages on Wednesday, disrupting communication and social activities for thousands of users worldwide.

According to Downdetector, more than 50,000 Facebook users reported issues such as login failures, slow post uploads, and delayed updates. Instagram experienced similar challenges, with over 23,000 users affected.

Meta promptly addressed the issue on X, formerly Twitter, saying, “We’re aware that a technical issue is impacting some users’ ability to access our apps. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.”

By early Thursday morning, Meta provided another update: “Thanks for bearing with us! We’re 99 percent of the way there—just doing some last checks. We apologize to those who’ve been affected by the outage.”