ChatGPT Faces Global Outage: Users in South Africa Also Affected

OpenAI’s flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, has been hit by a widespread outage, leaving frustrated users around the globe scrambling for answers.

Reports of disrupted access began flooding social media on Tuesday, with many complaining of frozen sessions, vanishing conversations, and painfully slow response times.

On X (formerly Twitter), one user, @hackernewbie, voiced concern after noticing that all their ChatGPT responses had mysteriously disappeared:
“Anybody else facing this with ChatGPT? All the responses seem to be gone?”

Another, @BunBrida, shared a screenshot of their stalled session, quipping:
“Is ChatGPT down, or is he ghosting me?”

South African users were quick to echo similar frustrations, with many reporting difficulty logging in or retrieving past chats.

According to monitoring site Downdetector, complaints about OpenAI services spiked sharply in the past 24 hours, suggesting the disruption may be more widespread than initially thought. The site tracks user-submitted reports and flags incidents when they surpass normal activity levels.

So far, OpenAI has not issued an official statement on the outage. The company has previously acknowledged smaller service interruptions, including reports from South African users in recent months.

For now, ChatGPT’s global fan base is left refreshing their browsers, waiting for the AI assistant to come back online.