OpenAI Outage: ChatGPT and Sora Go Down Amid High Demand

OpenAI’s popular tools, ChatGPT and Sora, experienced a significant outage on December 11, 2024, leaving users unable to access their services.

The disruption comes during OpenAI’s much-anticipated “12 Days of OpenAI,” which promised groundbreaking announcements throughout the event.

ChatGPT and Sora: The Extent of the Outage

Users attempting to access ChatGPT were met with a simple message declaring the service unavailable. Sora, OpenAI’s recently launched text-to-video generator, also went offline.

OpenAI’s status page confirmed the outage, which began at 6:17 PM ET, with updates showing the company working on a fix. By 9:30 PM ET, some regions reported partial recovery, though Sora remained mostly down.

Reports on DownDetector showed a massive spike in complaints, peaking at over 26,000 reports at 6:36 PM ET. While outages steadily decreased throughout the evening, many users remained affected.

OpenAI Responds to the Issue

OpenAI acknowledged the outage on X (formerly Twitter), apologizing to users and providing periodic updates. As of 8:50 PM ET, the company reported partial recovery for ChatGPT and its APIs, though no timeline was provided for full restoration.

The update read: “We are continuing to work towards remediation. API and ChatGPT traffic is partially recovered. Sora remains down.”

The Impact of OpenAI’s Recent Launches

The outage coincides with several major milestones for OpenAI. Earlier this week, Sora debuted as a revolutionary tool for creating videos from text prompts.

Meanwhile, Apple rolled out updates integrating ChatGPT with Siri on iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2.

However, these updates have been hampered by the outage. Siri’s new ChatGPT extension failed to deliver results, displaying messages like “Working with ChatGPT…” without completing tasks. Despite the integration’s potential, users are unable to experience its benefits fully.

Users Share Frustrations Online

TechRadar’s Editor-at-Large, Lance Ulanoff, reported being unable to access ChatGPT via the iOS app, and also confirmed that DALL-E and Sora were down.

Many users shared similar experiences, with platforms like DownDetector tracking thousands of complaints.

Visual Intelligence, another feature integrated with Apple’s devices, faced limitations due to the outage. Tasks such as describing objects through a camera remained inconsistent.

Recovery Updates and Future Expectations

By 9:30 PM ET, users on the U.S. East Coast reported regaining access to ChatGPT. OpenAI’s traffic recovery efforts appeared to be underway, with gradual restoration across different regions.

The partial recovery offered a glimmer of hope for frustrated users eager to resume using OpenAI’s tools.

This is not the first major outage for OpenAI. Similar disruptions occurred in June 2024, with prolonged downtime on the 4th and 17th of that month. As demand for AI-driven tools grows, ensuring system reliability remains a critical challenge for OpenAI.

What’s Next for OpenAI?

As OpenAI works to resolve this outage, users are left to wonder how such issues will be mitigated in the future. With the increasing reliance on tools like ChatGPT and Sora, robust infrastructure is more important than ever.

In the meantime, users can monitor OpenAI’s status page for live updates and track DownDetector for real-time reports.