Early Wednesday morning, the AI tool ChatGPT suddenly went offline, leaving people across the world scrambling.

This unexpected outage has caused major disruptions, especially for professionals who rely on the platform to help draft emails, conduct research, and provide customer service.

Students and Professionals Left Without Their AI Assistant

Not only has the corporate world been hit hard, but students have also found themselves stuck.

Many have come to depend on ChatGPT to help them with exams, essays, and reports, and now that it’s down, they’re left in the lurch.

When Did It Start and What’s Being Done?

According to Downdetector, a site that tracks internet outages, ChatGPT issues began cropping up around 4 a.m. Eastern Time.

OpenAI quickly acknowledged the problem, posting on their website that they were seeing “elevated error rates and latency” affecting ChatGPT and its API services.

Their engineering team has identified the root cause and is racing to fix the problem, but as of just before 11 a.m. ET, they warned it could take several more hours before everything is fully back online.

Widespread Impact Across Platforms and Services

OpenAI’s website lists a total of 14 components affected through their APIs, including chat, images, files, audio, and real-time responses.

The outage also hit multiple platforms including iOS and Android apps, WhatsApp integration, the web version, the DALL·E image generator, and desktop applications.

What’s Next? Stay Tuned for Updates

This story is still developing, and OpenAI promises to keep users updated as their team works to restore full service.

Meanwhile, the outage serves as a reminder of how much many of us depend on AI tools like ChatGPT in both work and study.