OpenAI hit by outage after ‘technical issue’ impacts Meta social media apps

OpenAI said its services have been affected by an outage, hours after Meta experienced a social media blackout with its apps.

According to DownDetector UK, a website that monitors social media outages, technical issues primarily with OpenAI’s ChatGPT service peaked at about 11.53pm.

OpenAI’s website was also affected.

In a post on X just after midnight, OpenAI said: “We’re experiencing an outage right now. We have identified the issue and are working to roll out a fix.

“Sorry and we’ll keep you updated!”

Five hours after reporting the problem, OpenAI posted that ChatGPT and the company’s API and Sora platforms had “recovered”.

It comes as Meta said it is “99% of the way there” in solving an ongoing social media blackout with its apps.

On Wednesday at around 6pm, thousands of social media users in parts of the UK reported an outage with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The social media giant reported that a “technical issue” had left users unable to access its services.

DownDetector said the three cities hit worst by the outage were London, Manchester and Glasgow.

Other major cities hit hard by the blackout were Cardiff, Nottingham and Birmingham.

By around 10pm on Wednesday, DownDetector said there had been 23,445 reports of Facebook outages, 11,466 Instagram outages and 18,646 on WhatsApp across Britain.

In an update issued at 10.26pm on X, Meta said the problem was now nearly resolved.

A spokesperson said: “Thanks for bearing with us! We’re 99% of the way there – just doing some last checks.

“We apologise to those who’ve been affected by the outage.”

Other parts of the world affected include Europe, Asia, South America and Australia, according to DownTracker.

To find out if your area is affected, visit downdetector.co.uk/status/facebook/map.