
On June 10, 2025, ChatGPT, OpenAI’s flagship AI chatbot, experienced a significant global outage, leaving millions of users without access to one of the most widely used AI tools.
Reports of disruptions began surfacing around 2:45 a.m. ET, with users across Europe, North America, and Australia encountering error messages and service unavailability.
What Happened?
OpenAI confirmed that the outage was due to elevated error rates caused by an unexpected surge in traffic, leading to system overloads.
Both the ChatGPT web and mobile applications were affected, along with the API and Sora, OpenAI’s text-to-video generator .
By 5 p.m. ET, services had been restored to normal operation.
Who Was Affected?
Users from various regions, including the United States, United Kingdom, and India, reported issues accessing ChatGPT.
The outage also impacted professionals and students who rely on the platform for tasks such as writing assistance, coding help, and study support.
How Did Users Respond?
The disruption led to a surge in interest for alternative AI tools. Search volume for “Gemini,” Google’s AI chatbot, increased by nearly 60% during the outage .
Other platforms like Claude 3 and Perplexity also saw increased usage as users sought temporary substitutes.
However, these services experienced their own challenges under the heightened demand.
Why Does This Matter?
This outage underscores the growing dependence on AI tools in daily workflows and the challenges companies face in maintaining consistent service uptime.
Experts emphasise the need for robust infrastructure solutions, including redundancy and effective load balancing systems, to prevent such widespread service failures in the future.
Looking Ahead
OpenAI has acknowledged the need to enhance system capacity and performance during peak usage times.
Also Read: ChatGPT Outage: What This Really Means For The AI Industry
The company is investing in more robust server capabilities and optimizing code to ensure responsive service availability during high-demand periods .
Additionally, OpenAI is evaluating ongoing feedback from users to refine their communication strategy during outages, aiming to improve transparency and maintain user trust.
The June 10 outage serves as a reminder of the importance of infrastructure reliability in AI services.
As AI continues to integrate into everyday applications, ensuring the resilience of these platforms will be crucial to meet the growing demands of users worldwide.