OpenAI certifies that ChatGPT services are’mostly’ restored following a temporary outage

OpenAI has stated that access to ChatGPT has been mainly restored after the widely used AI tool stopped operating for many users across the world early on Friday, December 27.ChatGPT’s developer API (application programming interface) and the startup’s recently introduced AI video creator Sora were both unavailable for several hours.

“We are currently experiencing an issue with high error rates on ChatGPT, the API, and Sora,” OpenAI stated on its official status page, noting that the outage was caused by a “upstream provider”.

Several users reported receiving a “internal server error” notice after entering their instructions on the ChatGPT platform. As of 7:34 a.m. on Friday, OpenAI verified that Sora and API access to ChatGPT are completely active. It said that it is still working on a comprehensive repair for ChatGPT. Around the same time as the ChatGPT outage, Microsoft reported a “power incident” at one of its data centers in the United States. However, it is unclear whether the two instances are connected. For background, the Redmond-based IT behemoth is not only a key investor in OpenAI, but also serves as its sole cloud service provider.

“There was a power incident in the South Central US AZ03 which affected multiple services. We have applied mitigation and are actively validating recovery to the impacted services. Further updates will be provided in 60 minutes, or sooner as events warrant,” Microsoft said, later adding that power has been “fully restored” to the affected data centre.