BREAKING (and glitching): The internet¡¯s favourite chatbot just ghosted the entire globe. ChatGPT is officially down, and the world is¡ not okay.
From frantic refreshes to spiralling memes, OpenAI¡¯s prized AI tool¡ªalong with its fancy cousins like Sora, APIs, and more¡ªhas decided to take a very unexpected nap. As of 3 p.m. IST, user reports shot through the digital roof, with over 800 complaints in India alone. That is not a minor glitch, that is a full-blown existential crisis for tech-savvy youngsters and beyond.
According to OpenAI, the issue involves ¡°elevated error rates and latency¡± across multiple services. Translation: the bots are tired, and nobody knows when they will be back.
Downdetector data confirms the chaos, spikes galore in outage reports across regions. In India, 88 percent of users said the chatbot simply refused to respond. Others faced issues with the mobile app and API access. Across the pond in the US, more than 900 users raised the alarm post-2:49 p.m. IST, with similar woes.
The official status page from OpenAI admits things are a mess: ChatGPT, Sora, APIs¡ªall stumbling. No ETA, no fancy fix, just a lot of virtual hand-wringing while engineers scramble behind the scenes.
And if you really thought people would chill while ChatGPT took a coffee break, well let me tell you a few more examples. Social media went straight-up feral. X (formerly Twitter) became a group therapy session, with users flooding the app like it was the emotional afterparty to the world¡¯s biggest tech breakdown. One user, clearly distressed, declared the bot had become their ¡°therapist, confidant, and lifeline to sanity," and now it was just gone.
Another lamented that the outage was so bad, they had to actually think for themselves at work (ugh). The flood of memes included screenshots of frozen chats, fake obituaries for GPT, and AI-shaped candles being lit in mourning. Some compared the experience to losing a friend mid-convo¡ªothers just panicked over missing deadlines, college assignments, and emotional venting sessions. Gen Z is spiralling, and honestly? It is kind of iconic.
An X user joked about being forced to write their own work emails again (gasp!), while another described the outage as ¡°a glitch in my soul,¡± confessing ChatGPT had become their emotional crutch. The AI tool has morphed from a chatbot to a digital bestie, therapist, and academic saviour, and its disappearance is being felt on a spiritual level.
One particularly meta moment came when a user asked ChatGPT to write a tweet about its own crash, just before it crashed mid-sentence. Talk about poetic timing.?This blackout follows an earlier April crash, which many linked to the viral Ghibli image craze that sent AI usage through the stratosphere.
As the world collectively hits Ctrl+F5 on their browsers, one thing is clear: ChatGPT is not just a tool, it is a lifestyle. And right now, that lifestyle is glitching hard.