On 3rd February 2026, ChatGPT experienced a massive system failure, which caused thousands of users to see error messages instead of receiving useful responses.
The U.S experienced a rapid increase in reported problems, which led to OpenAI admitting that their service was down, while they worked to restore its functionality.
The service interruption created an obvious problem for users who depended on the service for work purposes, studying, and their occasional philosophical arguments.
Downdetector Reports
The Downdetector outage tracking website reported that complaint numbers began to rise at 3.20pm. ET, which resulted in more than 13,000 complaints from 19 initial reports. The sudden surge in activity indicated that multiple users faced difficulties, which extended across various platforms, and it was not any individual connection problem.
However, the reports decreased throughout the afternoon until they reached approximately 3,700 reports, which happened just before 4pm. ET and then dropped to under 1000 reports, which showed signs of stabilization.
OpenAI Responds
The status page of OpenAI confirmed the issue, as the company reported higher error rates and mentioned that it had implemented all required solutions. They monitored system recovery progress, but chose not to disclose specific information about the incident that caused the system to fail.
Bottom Line
The Tuesday outage of ChatGPT lasted for a brief period, yet it demonstrated that automated systems experience errors at times. The system fixed the issue quickly, but the users experienced a glimpse of how people used to live before they received immediate AI solutions. The good news was that this stressful moment seemed to end quickly.