Shortly after the revelation of its integration with Apple’s Siri, OpenAI’s ChatGPT experienced a global outage. The outage began at 11:07 PM UTC on December 11, rendering customers unable to access ChatGPT, its API, or the video production tool Sora. The warning “ChatGPT is currently unavailable” greeted many users attempting to connect.
We're experiencing an outage right now. We have identified the issue and are working to roll out a fix.
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) December 12, 2024
Sorry and we'll keep you updated!
OpenAI quickly acknowledged the problem, apologizing to its 200 million members and promising them that a solution was in the works. The company announced that services had “largely recovered” by 3:53 AM UTC on December 12, and Australian users confirmed the restoration of functionality.
The downtime coincided with the release of Apple’s most recent software update, which merged ChatGPT with Siri on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. This capability enables Siri to use ChatGPT to answer complex questions, such as those involving photographs or documents. While OpenAI has not verified any direct link between the integration and the disruption, the timing has sparked suspicion.
Thanks for bearing with us! We’re 99% of the way there – just doing some last checks. We apologize to those who’ve been affected by the outage.
— Meta (@Meta) December 11, 2024
This is at least the fourth big outage for ChatGPT in recent months, with comparable problems in June and August. Despite these problems, Apple and OpenAI regard the Siri-ChatGPT integration as a significant milestone. Apple is using this capability to improve its AI skills, while OpenAI expands its reach to millions of new consumers.
As OpenAI refines its systems, the integration demonstrates the limitations and benefits of merging advanced AI capabilities with widely used consumer technologies.
