ChatGPT is back online, after a crash left users around the world unable to use the AI chatbot.
According to Down Detector, the problems started at around 08:45 GMT and affected users globally.
While the reason for the outage remains unclear, of those who reported issues, 82 per cent said they were having problems with ChatGPT, 11 per cent with login and seven per cent with the website.
Users flocked to social media to express their dismay at not being able to access the revolutionary artificial intelligence tool.
One said: ‘OMG!!! Thought it was just me! ChatGPT is down globally. And I can no longer think for myself, so that’s a problem!!!’
ChatGPT crashed this morning, leaving users around the world unable to use the AI chatbot
According to Down Detector, the problems with ChatGPT started at around 08:45 GMT and are affecting users globally
Another added: ‘Thousands of people dont know what to write at this point of time… Since #ChatGP #OpenAI is down!’
The OpenAI status page noted an incident today that read ‘Outage on chat.openai.com’.
At 02:18 PDT (09:18 GMT), an update was added saying that the firm was investigating the issue.
Nearly a full hour later, the incident was resolved.
Some users expressed their disappointment that those who are paying the $20 (£16.40) monthly subscription for ChatGPT Plus are not getting their money’s worth as a result of the outage.
This service currently offers a pared-down version of GPT-4 – the new and even more powerful version of the AI chatbot.
One Twitter user wrote: ‘ChatGPT+ users who are actually paying so that they don’t get c****y service, have been unable to use Chat GPT for hours now….
‘That’s ok if you don’t pay for a service, but I am not paying 20$ per month for this. Worst, no updates / communication on the issue’
OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, has yet to provide a reason for the outage.
When asked about its problems, the AI chatbot itself says ‘I don’t have access to information about ChatGPT’s specific technical issues or outages’ and ‘I don’t have the ability to monitor the functioning of the system or its components.’
ChatGPT is a large language model that has been trained on a massive amount of text data, allowing it to generate human-like text responses to a given prompt.
The current version, released by start-up OpenAI in November, is known as GPT3.5, and has been found to have a huge range of capabilities.
Users flocked to social media to express their dismay at not being able to access the revolutionary artificial intelligence tool, ChatGPT
For example, it has been used to pass exams, deliver a sermon, write software and give relationship advice.
But the new, more powerful version, GPT-4, was released to ChatGPT Plus subscribers last week.
This can accept inputs in the form of images as well as text, but still outputs its answers in text, meaning it can offer detailed descriptions of images.
If asked, ‘What’s funny about this image?’ GPT-4 will reply. Among other things, it can instantly calculate people’s tax liability and can pass the Uniform Bar Exam.
The OpenAI status page noted an incident today that read ‘Outage on chat.openai.com’. At 02:18 PDT (09:18 GMT), an update was added saying that the firm was investigating the issue
OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, has yet to provide a reason for the outage
OpenAI has already developed a text-to-image AI, DALL-E, which was released last year.
The reason for this outage has yet to be confirmed, but the platform often denies users access when it reaches capacity.
According to analytics firm SimilarWeb, ChatGPT averaged 13 million users per day in January, making it the fastest-growing internet app of all time.
It took TikTok about nine months after its global launch to reach 100 million users, and Instagram more than two years.
OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft Corp, made ChatGPT available to the public for free in late November.
