San Francisco, Feb 4, 2026, 07:18 (PST)
- Downdetector data revealed that over 13,000 U.S. users faced issues at the peak.
- OpenAI reported pinpointing the problem, implementing fixes, and keeping a close eye on recovery
- OpenAI’s status page recorded more ChatGPT-related incidents on Wednesday
ChatGPT was back online Tuesday following a short outage that triggered thousands of complaints from U.S. users, according to outage tracker Downdetector. OpenAI confirmed it pinpointed the issue and implemented fixes to resolve it. 1
The disruption hits hard since ChatGPT is now a daily staple for workers, students, and developers. Even brief outages can halt customer support, coding projects, and routine writing tasks.
Reliability is turning into a key selling point in the crowded AI space, where chatbots are now viewed less as “apps” and more as essential utilities.
OpenAI’s status page recorded several incidents impacting ChatGPT and developer services within the last 24 hours. Updates confirmed that the affected systems have since been restored. 2
More than 13,000 users flagged issues at the height of Tuesday’s outage, with reports dropping to 309 by 4:33 p.m. ET, according to Downdetector. Keep in mind, these numbers come from user submissions and other indicators, so the real impact might differ.
“We have identified the issue, applied the necessary mitigations and are monitoring the recovery,” OpenAI said in a status update. 3
The company’s log recorded “elevated error rates” on fine-tuning jobs Tuesday. Fine-tuning means further training an AI model on a customer’s data to tailor it for a specific task. 4
Early Wednesday, OpenAI reported that some users experienced issues loading or starting conversations in ChatGPT. The company later confirmed the problem was fixed. 5
On Wednesday, OpenAI experienced issues with updates to Custom GPTs—user-designed ChatGPT models tailored for particular tasks or workflows—but later confirmed the problem was resolved and services were back to normal. 6
TechRadar monitored the outage via a live blog, noting that users across several countries experienced ChatGPT issues. OpenAI responded by sharing updates on increased error rates and steps taken to address the problem. 7
ChatGPT goes head-to-head with consumer AI chatbots like Alphabet’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude, as firms battle for both users and enterprise business.
OpenAI hasn’t revealed the cause behind the outages. Repeated glitches like these can make businesses wary about relying on its services. If the downtime stretches out, doubts will only grow over depending heavily on one provider.
OpenAI’s status page showed all systems fully operational as of Wednesday morning. 8
