Partial ChatGPT outage prevented thousands from using the popular chatbot

Popular AI chatbot ChatGPT is experiencing degraded performance after a partial outage on Tuesday, according to parent company OpenAI and the website Downdetector, which tracks outages of major web services.

OpenAI said it began investigating issues at 2:36 am on Tuesday, and the problems began to spike around 5:30 am, according to Downdetector's data. In addition to ChatGPT, the company's video generator, Sora, and application programming interface for developers are affected. At its peak, Downdetector received nearly 2,000 error reports on Tuesday morning.

The company is "seeing a recovery" on its developer tools and ChatGPT, but previously said a full recovery across all impacted services could take hours.

ChatGPT worked normally in the 11 am ET hour when CNN asked it a question, but as early as Tuesday afternoon, OpenAI's website and Downdetector indicate the service is experiencing problems.

On Tuesday morning, OpenAI said it was "observing elevated error rates and latency across ChatGPT" in a post on X, adding that it's "identified the root case" and is "working as fast as possible to fix the issue."

OpenAI pointed CNN to its status page and X post when asked for further information on the issue.

The partial outage comes as ChatGPT has become a bigger presence in the office, with Glassdoor reporting that ChatGPT usage in the workplace had doubled within a year. Pew Research reports that 26% of US teens are using ChatGPT for schoolwork, up from 13% in 2023.

Some users joked on social media about struggling to answer basic questions and declining productivity during the outage. "ChatGPT is down...Which means I actually have to type out my own emails at work. Send prayers," one X post read.

Services like Zoom and X have also had high-profile outages this year.

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