Is OpenAI's ChatGPT down? Users unable to access AI chatbot take to X to complain

OpenAI’s popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, ChatGPT began experiencing widespread service disruptions on Thursday (January 23) around 5 pm (IST). Thousands of users across the globe were unable to login to the chatbot.

Is ChatGPT down?

Users reported getting messages of “Bad Gateway” or encountering extremely slow loading time when attempting to login to ChatGPT.

According to the global outage reporting tool downdetector.com, there was a spike in users flagging  issues with the AI chatbot service from 4:50 pm onwards.

Google search trends also showed a surge in the number of people punching in terms like “ChatGPT down” on the search engine.

Simultaneously, searches for Google’s own AI chatbot, Gemini, also shot up in volume. This appears to be likely due to ChatGPT users searching for an alternative while the OpenAI chatbot remained inaccessible.

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What OpenAI said about ChatGPT downtime

OpenAI has so far not issued a statement regarding ChatGPT being down.

However, on the OpenAI Status website, around 5:30 pm, it was reported that ChatGPT was “experiencing elevated error rates in the API [Application Programming Interface].” Roughly half an hour later, an update had said that “The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.”

By 6:15 pm, the OpenAI Status website declared that “This issue has now been resolved.”

ChatGPT downtime sparks memefest

Several ChatGPT users took to social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) to complain. Creative memes had popped up swiftly, too.

everyone rushing to X to see if chatgpt is down pic.twitter.com/MOdLUHzuhQ

— Product Hunt 😸 (@ProductHunt) January 23, 2025

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Bruh ChatGPT is down again??? During the work day?

So you’re telling me I have to… THINK?! pic.twitter.com/vXGWjGzJMq

— Mustafa (@KingMusss) January 23, 2025

yeah I can finally hear my own thoughts

— Lucian (@luciantqt) January 23, 2025

Connection to the AI chatbot may be lost, but people’s humour seemed to be intact.