On June 10, OpenAI’s flagship AI chatbot, ChatGPT, went partially offline, causing unanticipated interruptions for millions of users worldwide. The issue which affected ChatGPT’s online and app platforms, its API services, and even OpenAI’s image-generation tool, Sora, started late on Monday night and persisted far into Tuesday morning.
According to OpenAI’s official status page, users may notice elevated error rates, lag, or complete access failure when attempting to use ChatGPT. The company began investigating the issue in the early hours but acknowledged that full recovery could take several hours, especially for users starting their day on the West Coast of the United States.
Timeline of Events: When the Outage Began
The disruption was first noticed around 2:45 a.m. ET when users began flooding DownDetector, a website that tracks online service outages. Error reports spiked again as users in Europe, the UK, and Australia started logging in during their business hours.
Around 5:30 a.m. PT, OpenAI formally determined the problem and said that their engineering team was working on a solution. By 8 a.m. PT, however, the business acknowledged that it might take longer to fully resume regular operations. Some users claimed that the service was operating regularly again as of 11 a.m. ET, while others were still experiencing issues.
Who Was Impacted?
There was no discrimination in the problem. ChatGPT users, both free and paid, faced difficulties. In addition to ChatGPT, developers who used OpenAI’s API had performance problems, causing numerous applications that depend on the malfunctioning service. Even Sora, OpenAI’s video and image-generation platform, faced errors during the outage window.
Users took to social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) to voice their frustration. Many joked about how their productivity suffered without the AI assistant.
One X post read.
“ChatGPT is down… Which means I actually have to type out my own emails at work. Send prayers.”
Growing Pains for a Popular AI Tool
This outage comes at a time when ChatGPT is seeing massive adoption. According to a recent Glassdoor report, usage of ChatGPT in the workplace has doubled in the last yaer. A Pew Research survey also found that 26% of U.S. Teens now use ChatGPT for schoolwork, compared to just 13% in 2023. The infrastructure of OpenAI is under a lot of strain from the expanding user base. With the well-known statement, “Our GPUs are melting,” CEO Sam Altman has publicly acknowledged that the company’s computational resources are under strain.
A Week Filled with Significant OpenAI Announcements
The fact that this service outage happened amid a significant week of OpenAI announcements makes it particularly noteworthy. Just one day earlier, Apple revealed a deep integration of ChatGPT into its devices at the WWDC 2025 event. This includes new AI capabilities powered by OpenAI’s models on iPhones and iPads.
Also on Monday, OpenAI confirmed it had reached a $10 billion annualized revenue milestone, a significant mark of its commercial success. CEO Altman additionally announced an 80% price cut for developers using OpenAI’s “o3” AI models via its API, a move aimed at expanding access while putting more load on their already stressed systems.
Previous Outages and Reliability Concerns
Even while digital systems occasionally experience issues, the length and scope of this outage make it more worrisome than typical. Similar problems have already plagued OpenAI, especially as demand increases. Nevertheless, the majority of earlier interruptions were fixed in a few hours. This time, the outage lasted far longer than the usual downtime interval, which raised concerns about resilience and scalability.
Uptime dependability becomes crucial as the platform emerges as a preferred helper in academic, professional, and creative domains. Millions of customers across time zones are now impacted by even a few hours of outage.
Techi’s Take
This most recent outage serves as a warning. The demand for stability rises as AI technologies like ChatGPT are incorporated more and more into daily life, whether for creative, educational, or professional purposes. Although OpenAI has grown remarkably quickly, infrastructure readiness and scale must coexist. A rising reliance on a small number of AI companies is also highlighted by the outage. For both users and developers, it poses the question: Are we prepared to entrust mission-critical workflows to systems that have the potential to abruptly shut down?
Even though OpenAI reacted promptly and transparently, it is evident that reliable backend systems and open communication are more crucial than ever. Going forward, it might be crucial to create more decentralized, scalable, and fault-tolerant systems to make sure AI lives up to its potential.
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