OpenAI said ChatGPT is currently facing periodic outages caused by an unusual surge in traffic, indicating a  possible DDoS attack. Efforts are underway to address and mitigate this issue, as reported on OpenAI’s status page.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.

Recently, OpenAI has been experiencing an issue resulting in high error rates across the API and ChatGPT. It experienced a service outage starting just before 9 AM ET / 6 AM PT on Wednesday, lasting for over 90 minutes, rendering it inaccessible during this period.

The recent service disruption occurred after OpenAI’s first developer conference- DevDay, where they released their latest advanced AI model, GPT-4 Turbo. Additionally, OpenAI introduced a feature enabling users to personalise their ChatGPT experience.

Earlier, OpenAI chief Sam Altman  posted on X that new features from DevDay are far outpacing our expectations. While the initial plan was to launch GPTs for all subscribers on Monday, there has been a slight delay. He further  cautioned users about potential service instability in the short term due to increased load, apologizing for any inconvenience caused. 

This outage might affect several businesses which are using OpenAI’s APIs. According to OpenAI’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, the platform is now utilised by over 92% of Fortune 500 firms, a notable increase from the 80% reported in August.These companies represent diverse sectors including finance, law, and education.