ChatGPT Faces Outages Again Amid High Demand and New Features

NEW YORK, NY – ChatGPT experienced another round of outages on April 1, 2025, affecting users primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom. Reports increased sharply around 9 a.m. ET, coinciding with patterns from previous days, suggesting high user load during peak hours.

The outages were characterized by error messages, including “something went wrong” on the desktop platform and “upstream connect error” on the mobile app. OpenAI‘s Status page indicated increased error rates and degraded performance, which have been ongoing challenges throughout the week.

OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, addressed the situation via X (formerly Twitter), stating, “we are getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to break, and for service to sometimes be slow as we deal with capacity challenges.” This reflects the pressure OpenAI has faced in managing the fallout from its new features.

Reports on Downdetector indicated nearly 1,500 complaints during the latest outage. Users experienced intermittent issues, with many expressing frustration particularly around the timing of the outages, which have consistently occurred at peak usage times.

As OpenAI grapples with surging demand, the company confirmed that it is investigating these persistent issues while attempting to implement mitigations. Altman noted the unprecedented demand, including a surge that saw ChatGPT gain over one million users in just one hour—an impressive milestone, but one that also underscored the pressure on the service.

Users have pointed to the recent excitement surrounding ChatGPT’s new image generation features as a potential factor behind the outages. Some have suggested that the attention from viral trends, like the Studio Ghibli craze, may be contributing to the increased server demands.

As of now, OpenAI has reported improvements in service, with the number of active errors decreasing. However, users were advised to remain cautious of further interruptions, especially during peak hours. OpenAI’s ongoing work to stabilize its services comes amid a period of rapid expansion and new feature rollouts.

Despite the recent disruptions, the expectation remains that OpenAI will continue to enhance and modify its offerings. However, many loyal users, particularly paid subscribers, are hopeful that the company will prioritize robustness and reliability in its services as it scales.