ChatGPT was down for some free users – here’s what you need to know

Down Detector reports are spiking

As you can see just before 3PM ET, reports for issues on ChatGPT began spiking and I’ve been getting an error in my attempts to use the AI chatbot on the dekstop and via the iOS app.

OpenAI’s deployed a fix for the issue

Now, a bit over an hour after ChatGPT began having issues, OpenAI says it has deployed a fix as of 4:07 PM ET. Here’s the update:

We have deployed a fix to restore functionality and are monitoring to confirm resolution.

It’s certainly promising and does line up with reported issues dropping on Down Detector. I’ve just given ChatGPT a go again on the desktop and got a response, albeit after a longer processing time, but it’s still showing an error on mobile.

Hopefully, we’ll all be back to normal shortl,y and free users will be able to use ChatGPT again.

In line with OpenAI rolling out a fix for a bug causing errors in ChatGPT responses, Down Detector reports are now under 1,00, currently showing 463 reports as of 4:01 PM ET.

ChatGPT is back up on my free account on desktop and mobile, with only mobile taking a bit longer to deliver a response. It seems like OpenAI is well on the way to full recovery, more than an hour after issues began with ChatGPT.

Reported issues with ChatGPT have dropped to 94 on Down Detector with the last update, and OpenAI is still monitoring the fix that’s been deployed. So I decided to ask ChatGPT itself if its outage is over.

A pretty happy response came back quickly, “Hey! 👋 Yep — everything’s back up and running smoothly now” before asking how my day is. It seems things are closer to normal with ChatGPT now, and it might be that the outage was only a little over an hour long, with a quick fix deployed by OpenAI.

Of course, we’re still monitoring this and waiting for a full all-clear from OpenAI’s status page.