ChatGPT down: OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, faced a global outage at around 1 am today, data from Downdetector, a platform that tracks user-reported outages, shows. At present, the platform is back online, and Downdetector now shows that there are no ongoing issues with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The message on the Downdetector states: “User reports indicate no current problems at OpenAI.”
In India, about 97 per cent of users who reported problems said ChatGPT was completely unavailable, with over 2,000 outage reports filed around 1 am on Wednesday. Only 3 per cent reported issues with the app. The highest number of reports came from major cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Nagpur, Mumbai, and Kolkata.
Over 33,000 people in the United States flagged the outage, with 92 per cent of users reporting trouble with ChatGPT itself, while 7 per cent of them faced issues accessing the chatbot’s website. Reports were mainly concentrated in cities like Los Angeles and New York.
‘We are currently experiencing issues’
OpenAI’s status page confirmed that ChatGPT is experiencing degraded performance. “We are currently experiencing issues,” it said, before adding that a fix has been implemented and that the company is monitoring the recovery. The company said that Codex is the affected component.
“We are investigating an issue with creating new Codex tasks. We are working on implementing a mitigation,” the company’s status page said.
ChatGPT down: ‘Unusual Activity Detected’
During the downtime, ChatGPT users said that they were logged out of their accounts and were unable to access their previous chats. Many reported receiving an error, with the message: “Unusual activity has been detected from your device. Try again later.”
Chatgpt has me locked out everywhere
— Sara Dietschy 🍑y (@saradietschy) December 2, 2025
Desktop and mobile.. anyone else experiencing issues?? pic.twitter.com/H4E8J08Dwx
“Oops, an error occurred,” read another response that the chatbot gave.
For others, the query was just spinning, and the chatbot gave no response whatsoever.
‘Code red’ situation at OpenAI
The outage happened at a time when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had been pushing the company to focus heavily on making ChatGPT better. He called it a “code red” situation where other projects will slow down for now and even called for temporary team transfers, The Information reported. He, per the outlet, had not mentioned what fixes need to be prioritised and why.
The report added that Altman, in an internal Slack memo, asked the team to quickly upgrade ChatGPT’s features so users can get a more personalised experience. He also wants improvements in how the AI behaves and how well it generates images.
