ChatGPT experienced a significant outage across the United States on Thursday, with users reporting a 'bad gateway' error when attempting to access the AI tool. The issues began around 7am ET, according to Downdetector, which monitors online outages.
The 'bad gateway' error indicates a communication breakdown between servers, where one server received an invalid response from another. Thousands of users reported problems, particularly along the East Coast, as many rely on the tool for tasks such as research, writing, and data analysis.
OpenAI acknowledged the issue on its service status page, stating it was investigating elevated error rates in the API. The outage comes as OpenAI founder Sam Altman backs President Donald Trump's new AI venture, Stargate, which involves a $500 billion investment over four years.
Altman joined Oracle's Larry Ellison and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son to credit Trump for the project, which aims to build AI infrastructure. However, Elon Musk disputed the funding, claiming SoftBank has less than $10 billion secured. Altman responded by inviting Musk to visit the construction site in Texas.
ChatGPT currently has 300 million weekly active users and 123.5 million daily active users. The extent of the outage remains unclear, but users expressed frustration on social media, with one posting: 'Seriously, how am I supposed to brainstorm, write, and research without my AI assistant.'
