In a recurring setback, ChatGPT, an AI tool developed by OpenAI, went offline on Monday, June 17, leaving users unable to access its services. According to reports from DownDetector, this outage also affected the parent company, OpenAI. The outage occurred less than two weeks after the previous disruption. The exact cause of the outage is still under investigation by OpenAI since at least 2:39 p.m. EST.

Users attempting to utilize ChatGPT have been faced with non-responsiveness or error messages indicating a problem while generating responses. OpenAI has been contacted for a comment, and their response will be shared once received. The company has assured users that they are actively working to resolve the issue.

Amidst the downtime, Tom's Guide Global Editor, Mark Spoonauer, discovered that ChatGPT stated they were investigating the outage. They recommended a "hard refresh" on web browsers or the Mac App as a potential solution. DownDetector continued to receive reports of ChatGPT's unavailability, although some users claimed limited success in accessing the service.

While the outage has prompted frustration, some social media users have taken a more lighthearted approach, attempting to find alternatives or making humorous remarks. Notably, the hashtag #GoogleGemini started trending on X, indicating a potential shift towards alternative AI chatbots.

ChatGPT, launched in 2022, has gained significant popularity as a versatile AI chatbot capable of tasks such as writing papers and generating images based on user-entered text prompts. Its reliability, however, has faced criticism due to frequent outages, with the company's own logs revealing at least one significant outage per month since March.

The impact of ChatGPT's downtime has prompted users to explore other options such as Gemini, Claude 3, and Perplexity as potential alternatives. Previous instances have demonstrated that increased traffic to these platforms can lead to performance issues.

OpenAI recently announced a partnership with Apple, integrating ChatGPT into the tech giant's AI platform, Apple Intelligence, to be implemented in iOS 18. This collaboration aims to handle processing on-device, minimizing reliance on external servers.

As of now, ChatGPT remains down, and OpenAI continues to investigate the elevated error rates affecting its services. Users are advised to stay tuned for further updates. In the meantime, alternatives and workarounds, such as manual cache clearance and hard refreshes, may prove useful for those reliant on AI chatbot services.