- ChatGPT experienced major outages due to targeted DDoS attacks following an outage across OpenAI’s services on Wednesday morning
- Outages occurred Wednesday evening around 11pm ET after things had returned to normal earlier; OpenAI said customer information was not compromised
- The attack highlights vulnerabilities of AI systems to malicious actors; building resilience will be critical as AI becomes more ubiquitous
ChatGPT, OpenAI‘s viral chatbot, is experiencing major outages caused by a targeted denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. This comes after Wednesday’s widespread outage across OpenAI’s services.
The Outage Timeline
On Wednesday morning, OpenAI reported errors impacting all services. This included the chatbot used by over 100 million weekly active users and the API used by over 2 million developers.
Things returned to normal after a fix was implemented, but the relief was short-lived. OpenAI reported another outage Wednesday evening around 11pm ET, saying “We are dealing with periodic outages due to an abnormal traffic pattern reflective of a DDoS attack.”
OpenAI’s Response
OpenAI said customer information has not been compromised. The company is continuing to work to mitigate the attack.
This outage follows OpenAI’s first in-person event on Monday, where they announced the new GPT-4 Turbo model and surpassing 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users.
The Broader Impact
Over 92% of Fortune 500 companies now use OpenAI’s platform across industries like finance, law, and education. The outages disrupt these services and developer workflows.
While the root cause remains unclear, the attack highlights the vulnerabilities of AI systems to malicious actors. As AI becomes more ubiquitous, building resilience will be critical.
