ChatGPT and Sora Experience Second Outage This Month, Disrupting Users Globally

OpenAI’s popular AI tools, ChatGPT and Sora, faced another outage on December 12, 2024, marking the second disruption this month. The downtime began at approximately 7 PM EST and lasted for four to five hours before services were restored. Both free and premium users reported issues accessing the tools, sparking widespread frustration and debates over AI reliability .

While OpenAI has not officially confirmed the cause of the outage, many speculate it may be linked to a surge in traffic following Apple’s announcement of ChatGPT integrations into iOS 18.2 for Siri and Writing Tools. The increased demand likely strained OpenAI’s servers, resulting in the temporary downtime .

During the outage, users turned to social media to share their frustrations and humor about the disruption. One user tweeted, “How did I ever manage without ChatGPT? Hurry, I’m dying without it!” Meanwhile, others criticized the recurrence of such downtimes, particularly for paid subscribers. Comments ranged from humorous remarks to more serious concerns about reliability for business-critical tasks .

OpenAI responded to the incident via X (formerly Twitter), stating, “We’re experiencing an outage right now. We have identified the issue and are working to roll out a fix.” By midnight EST, services had been gradually restored. The company reassured users of its commitment to improving reliability and scalability to handle growing demand .

This latest disruption highlights the increasing dependence on AI tools for productivity, communication, and creative tasks. It also underscores the challenges faced by AI providers in ensuring high availability and performance amidst surging adoption rates. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged in earlier statements that while reliability has improved, there is still “a lot more work to do” to meet user expectations .

As AI continues to expand into mainstream use, incidents like these prompt discussions about infrastructure readiness and the need for contingency plans. OpenAI’s ongoing efforts to improve server capacity and reliability will be closely monitored as the demand for AI services grows.