Thursday morning, users of the super popular AI tool ChatGPT woke up to a big problem – the platform was down and showing a “bad gateway” error.
Reports of the issue popped up all over the world, with Downdetector, the website that monitors outages, saying the problem started at 7 a.m. ET.
The “bad gateway” error means a communication failure between servers where one server gets no response or an invalid response from another.
For ChatGPT’s millions of users, that means workflows were disrupted and they had to resort to other tools or do things manually.
The outage had people frustrated and they took to social media to vent. On X (formerly Twitter), reactions were funny to serious.
One user, #raghhavvvv, tweeted, “ChatGPT down in the middle of the day. I’m about to get fired. Pray for me.” Another, #Shivam_Verma_98, wrote, “ChatGPT is down and I have to use my brain again.”
Others agreed, with #DollarGill asking, “Is it just me or is anyone else’s ChatGPT down? #ChatGPT #ChatGPTDown.”
Meanwhile #officialsweetch joked, “I can’t believe ChatGPT is down and I have to use my own brain.”
ChatGPT has become an essential tool for many professionals with 300 million weekly active users and 123.5 million daily active users. Its importance in daily workflows is obvious – content creation, research, customer service.
The outage showed just how much we’ve come to rely on the AI tool and many users felt the pinch.
Although we don’t know the full extent of the outage, this is a reminder of how much we’ve come to depend on AI-driven tools in our professional and personal lives. And a reminder of what happens when these essential tools go down.