OpenAI said ChatGPT had returned to normal operations on Wednesday after a global outage disrupted access for tens of thousands of users overnight. The company confirmed on its status page that all impacted services had recovered. The disruption drew wide attention as Downdetector.com recorded more than 41,000 user reports at the height of the incident.
Users across regions said they could not log in, load conversations or start new chats. Many also experienced stalled responses or repeated error messages. The increase in reports on Downdetector suggested a broad service interruption rather than isolated failures. The incident followed a series of smaller issues on Tuesday, when users experienced brief login errors and interruptions during active sessions.
OpenAI's first alert early on Wednesday noted increased error rates across ChatGPT. A separate update flagged problems in creating new Codex tasks. Both issues were later marked as resolved once systems stabilised. The company said all affected features, including conversations, login tools and file uploads, were running normally after recovery. Earlier alerts also recorded temporary errors across real-time functions and compliance tools, which were cleared once the system reset.
The company has not disclosed the cause of the outages. Its updates stated only that services had “fully recovered” after engineers completed internal checks. OpenAI continues to post real-time status logs, which allow users to track any future disruptions as they occur.
The outage comes as reliance on AI systems grows among individuals, developers and businesses. Many users integrate ChatGPT into daily workflows, customer support tools, writing tasks and coding assistance. Any service interruption can slow these processes and lead to immediate follow-up traffic on outage-tracking platforms. OpenAI said it was not aware of any ongoing issues as of Wednesday morning and would update its status page if conditions changed.
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