ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, has faced a significant outage in recent days, following the viral success of its Studio-Ghibli art feature.
The feature, which allows users to convert their photos into Studio Ghibli-style art, attracted massive traffic to the platform, leading to server issues.
Why Did ChatGPT Go Down?
The Studio-Ghibli feature seems to have triggered a surge in traffic, with reports indicating that over 10 million new users joined the platform within just one hour.
This massive influx of traffic has put immense pressure on the platform’s servers, leading to outages in various regions, including the United States and India.
Is anyone else experiencing issues with ChatGPT? It seems to be down again!! pic.twitter.com/LUlrqp9xAq
— Prateek Jain (@PrateekJainDev) April 1, 2025
The Outage Details
Time of Outage: The first reports of the outage started coming in from the United States at 6:30 PM (local time).
Reports on Downdetector: By the time of reporting, over 1,800 outage reports had been logged in the US, and 120 reports were registered in India.
Impact on Users: Both the website and app versions of ChatGPT were affected. Users reported issues with generating responses, with many seeing the error message:
“Something went wrong while generating a response.
If this problem persists, please contact us through our Support Center at help.openai.com.”
Memes and Reactions: The outage has sparked a wave of memes and humorous posts on platforms like X (formerly Twitter), where users joked about the situation, with some even referencing the Ghibli art trend as the culprit behind the downtime.
how do I explain to my prof that I couldn’t make my deadline because chatgpt is down ???????????? pic.twitter.com/SGH9AqwXUG
— Iris (@IrisBoutire) March 30, 2025
Is This the First Time?
This isn’t the first time ChatGPT has experienced downtime. A similar outage occurred last week after the Ghibli AI art feature went viral. OpenAI acknowledged the issue at that time and swiftly implemented fixes.
What’s Next?
While OpenAI has yet to release an official statement regarding this latest outage, it is likely that the team is working to stabilize the servers and prevent further disruptions.
Given the overwhelming popularity of new features like the Ghibli art generator, the platform may need to scale up its infrastructure to handle the growing number of users.
For now, users are advised to remain patient and check OpenAI’s support channels for updates.
