Is ChatGPT down? Site back after OpenAI investigates ‘increased errors’

On January 23, 2025By Littum

ChatGPT, the hugely popular conversational chatbot, is back up and running after being down for a short time on Thursday.

Downdetector, a website that tracks disruptions in online services, recorded a sharp increase in reports of outages to ChatGPT Thursday morning.

Try on open the artificial intelligence tool developed by OpenAI on Thursday morning briefly resulted in a lengthy attempt to load the web page, followed by a “bad gateway” error message.

OpenAI as said in a status update that it had investigated “increased errors for ChatGPT,” said at 8:43 that the cause of the problem had been identified. The chatbot now appears to be working again.

The two-year-old chatbot developed by OpenAI is used by hundreds of millions of people every week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said last year.

USA TODAY left a message Thursday morning with OpenAI seeking comment.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed and launched in 2022 by OpenAI.

Unlike predictive AI, generative AI is trained on large amounts of data to identify patterns and create its own content, including voices, music, images and videos.

ChatGPT allows users to interact with the chat tool just as they would with another human, with the chatbot generating conversational responses to questions or prompts.

Proponents say ChatGPT could reinvent online search engines and could help with research, information writing, content creation and customer service chatbots. However, the service has become controversial at times, with some critics expressing concern that ChatGPT and similar programs fuel online misinformation and enable students to plagiarize.

This article has been updated to add new information.

Eric Lagatta covers the latest and trending news for USA TODAY. Contact him at [email protected]