OpenAI faced a significant service disruption on Thursday, affecting its widely-used ChatGPT chatbot, API services, and its text-to-image generation platform, Sora. The outage, which began around 1:30 PM ET on December 26 (12:00 AM IST, December 27), left thousands of users in the US and other regions unable to access these services. According to online outage monitoring platforms, the disruption persisted for nearly five hours before OpenAI confirmed that all systems were back to full functionality.
Reports from Down Detector, an outage monitoring platform, indicated a sharp spike in user complaints about ChatGPT access starting at 1:30 PM ET. Over 50,000 users reported issues within the first hour of the outage. At 2:00 PM ET, OpenAI acknowledged the problem through an update on its official status page, stating that they were dealing with high error rates across ChatGPT, the API, and Sora. This communication reassured users that the issue was being actively investigated.
The cause of the outage was later attributed to an “upstream provider,” although OpenAI did not elaborate further. Around the same time, Microsoft reported a power issue at one of its data centers. This problem disrupted several Microsoft services, including Microsoft 365, Azure, and Xbox cloud gaming, sparking speculation about a potential link between the two events. However, neither OpenAI nor Microsoft confirmed a direct connection between their respective outages.
By evening, OpenAI updated users that the affected platforms were fully operational once again. The outage underscored the growing reliance on AI-powered tools for both personal and professional use, as well as the challenges companies face in ensuring uninterrupted service. While OpenAI has not provided further details about the incident, the quick resolution highlights its commitment to maintaining service reliability and addressing issues promptly.