Is ChatGPT Down? What We Know - Newsweek
OpenAI's ChatGPT experienced a significant outage on Wednesday, April 9, leading to many users being unable to access the popular AI chatbot. The disruption seemed to have started around 5.00AM ET, coinciding with reports of outages on Downdetector, a real-time platform that tracks problems with websites and tools. Moreover, the real-time monitoring platform, Down for Everyone, also confirmed the outage, with users encountering errors while using ChatGPT.
Previous Outages
This recent outage follows several others in the past few weeks, with two other outages reported earlier in April. Despite this, OpenAI has not provided an official explanation for the disruptions.
Users turned to social media platforms to share their experiences with the platform, with many questioning whether ChatGPT was down. Some even shared images of error messages they received while trying to access the website.
About ChatGPT
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is an AI chatbot capable of a wide range of functions, such as idea generation, text analysis, itinerary planning, interview preparation, coding assistance, and creating AI-generated images. Operating on OpenAI's GPT-4 language model, the chatbot can engage in human-like conversations and provide context-aware responses to user queries.
Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has experienced significant growth, attracting 1.6 billion visits to the website in December of the same year. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reported that ChatGPT garnered one million users within an hour of introducing its new image-generation feature, setting a record for the platform.
The surge in traffic was largely due to a viral trend where users instructed the chatbot to create artwork resembling the style of Studio Ghibli, the famous Japanese animation studio renowned for films like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro. This resulted in social media platforms being flooded with AI-generated scenes reminiscent of Ghibli's visual aesthetic, generating widespread interest and engagement.
Latest Insights
This is an ongoing story, and updates will be provided as more information becomes available. Newsweek upholds a commitment to factual and fair journalism. Readers are encouraged to rate the article on the fairness meter to ensure accountability.
Newsletters in your inbox See all
Company Editions: Contact Terms of Use © 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC
