On September 3, 2025, numerous users worldwide encountered difficulties with ChatGPT, as the AI chatbot malfunctioned for several hours. Downdetector, a website that monitors internet issues, indicated that hundreds reported problems after 11 am. Frustrated users took to social media to express their concerns. In India alone, over 500 individuals experienced issues with ChatGPT. By 3:30 pm, the situation had largely improved, with only 42 users still facing problems. The breakdown primarily affected 85% of users trying to access ChatGPT, while 13% encountered issues with the OpenAI website, and 2% faced difficulties with the Writing Coach feature. Both the mobile app and website experienced disruptions, and some users received “network error” notifications.
OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT, has yet to provide an official explanation for the outage. ChatGPT has experienced outages previously, including a significant global failure on January 23, 2025, lasting over three hours, and another major crash on February 5, 2025, as well as several brief outages between September 1 and 3, 2025, and a major glitch on December 26, 2024.