ChatGPT Users Left Stranded as Outage Brings Services to a Standstill
A massive outage has crippled OpenAI’s popular chatbot service, ChatGPT, leaving millions of users worldwide unable to access their accounts or create new ones. The issue, which began at around 8 PM ET on Wednesday, August 19, is also affecting the company’s coding platform, Codex, as well as its API endpoints.
For those affected, attempting to sign in or load previous conversations results in a frustrating loop of loading animations and “too many concurrent requests” errors. New users trying to create accounts are met with failure screens, while existing users are unable to send messages due to the technical issues plaguing the platform. OpenAI’s status page confirms that multiple services, including Codex and 12 API endpoints, are currently experiencing problems.
According to OpenAI, its team has identified the root cause of the issue and is working on implementing a mitigation to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. The company acknowledges the outage on its status page and promises updates on the progress of resolving the issue. As we speak, users continue to report issues with accessing their accounts and using the platform.
The outage highlights the critical importance of robust infrastructure and redundancy in large-scale services like ChatGPT. With millions of users worldwide relying on the chatbot for various tasks, a prolonged outage can have significant consequences, including lost productivity and potential financial losses. OpenAI’s commitment to transparency by acknowledging the issue and providing regular updates is reassuring, but the company must also prioritize swift resolution to minimize the impact on its users.
For those affected, it’s essential to remain patient and keep an eye on OpenAI’s status page for updates on when services are expected to return to normal. In the meantime, users can consider exploring alternative chatbot options or seeking assistance from OpenAI support teams if needed. As we move forward in a world increasingly reliant on AI-powered tools, incidents like this underscore the need for robust cybersecurity measures and reliable infrastructure to mitigate disruptions.
Source: Bleeping Computer — 2026-08-20