ChatGPT and its companion services went down worldwide early Saturday morning, leaving users unable to load conversations, send prompts or access saved chat history in what OpenAI later confirmed was its fourth service disruption in as many days.

Outage-tracking service Downdetector said user reports indicating problems with OpenAI began climbing at 5:11 a.m. Eastern time, with the hashtag #OpenaiDown circulating on social media shortly after. More than 3,000 users had flagged the outage on Downdetector by Saturday morning, and "Is ChatGPT down?" began trending on Google search as reports spread.

The outage affected all three of OpenAI's core services simultaneously: the ChatGPT chatbot itself, the company's developer-facing API, and Codex, its AI-powered coding assistant. Users encountered a range of symptoms, including sidebar loading animations that never resolved, an inability to send new messages, and error messages citing "too many concurrent requests." According to reporting from TheNextWeb, users encountered 503 errors carrying the internal label "biscuit_baker_service_me_circuit_open," a technical signal indicating requests were being blocked before they could reach OpenAI's servers.

The disruption was global in scope, with reports coming in from users across the United States, Europe, India and Australia, according to Unite.AI, affecting not just the consumer-facing ChatGPT app but also the many outside applications and services that rely quietly on OpenAI's API........

© International Business Times