ChatGPT Suffers Major Outage, Thousands Report Service Disruptions

New York, NY – February 3, 2026 – A widespread outage affected OpenAI's popular artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, on Thursday, February 3, 2026, leaving numerous users unable to access the service. Reports of disruptions began surfacing mid-afternoon Eastern Time, with outage tracking websites registering a significant spike in user-submitted complaints.

Downdetector, a popular platform for monitoring service outages, saw a surge in reports, with numbers climbing to over 13,000 at its peak around 3:20 p.m. ET. Users across the United States and potentially other regions reported issues ranging from login failures to ChatGPT not responding or exhibiting significantly slower response times. While Downdetector's data is based on user submissions and may not reflect the exact number of affected individuals, the volume of reports indicated a substantial disruption.

OpenAI acknowledged the issues through its official status page. The company confirmed two primary problems: "Elevated error rates for finetuning jobs" and "Elevated errors for ChatGPT and Platform users." These technical terms suggest that the outage impacted not only the direct conversational interface of ChatGPT but also backend processes crucial for its ongoing development and operation. While the exact cause of the disruptions was not immediately detailed, the confirmation from OpenAI validated the widespread user experience.

Sources indicate that the issues were addressed relatively swiftly. OpenAI stated that "necessary mitigations" had been applied, and by approximately 6:30 p.m. ET, the company's status page indicated that ChatGPT was back to being "operational." The number of reports on Downdetector also saw a dramatic decrease during this period, falling to under 1,000 and eventually below 100 by the evening.

This incident is not the first time advanced AI services have faced stability challenges. As AI models like ChatGPT become increasingly integrated into daily workflows and research, their reliability becomes paramount. TechRadar, in its coverage, noted that the disruption, while significant for those affected, was described by OpenAI as "relatively small" in scope. However, the impact on thousands of users underscores the dependency on these platforms and the critical need for robust infrastructure and rapid issue resolution.

The outage serves as a reminder of the complexities involved in managing and scaling large-scale AI systems. While OpenAI has not provided a detailed post-mortem of the specific technical failure, the swift restoration of services suggests a proactive response to the identified problems. The company's transparency through its status page was crucial in informing users and managing expectations during the downtime.

This event is likely to fuel ongoing discussions about the resilience of AI infrastructure and the potential implications of such outages for businesses and individuals who rely on these cutting-edge technologies. As AI continues its rapid advancement, ensuring consistent and reliable access remains a key challenge for developers and a critical concern for users worldwide.