Is ChatGPT down for you? OpenAI is on it - but these alternatives can help in the meantime

The world's most popular AI chatbot is reportedly down for thousands of users, and its creator is scrambling for a fix.

Just after 6:40 a.m. ET this morning, DownDetector, a site that tracks online outages, saw a massive spike in reports that OpenAI's ChatGPT wasn't working. Most users were seeing a "bad gateway" error. 

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At 8:12 a.m. ET, a status update under the heading "Increased errors for ChatGPT" on OpenAI's site read "Investigating - We are currently experiencing elevated error rates for ChatGPT. We are currently investigating." 30 minutes later, OpenAI said it had identified the root cause and was working on a fix. It didn't explain what the problem was. Nearly an hour later, at 9:34 a.m. ET, it said a fix was still in progress.

By 10:09 a.m. ET, OpenAI said it had implemented a fix and was monitoring activity.

ChatGPT launched in the fall of 2022 and quickly became the fastest-growing consumer software. The base version is free, but some users pay as much as $200 a month for the service. Around 300 million people use OpenAI's chatbot every week, and the chatbot handles more than 1 billion messages a day. 

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I was able to access ChatGPT when I tried at 10 a.m. Reports on DownDetector have declined, but are still steady, indicating it's not yet up for everyone.

AI chatbots have soared in popularity over the past years, with many people incorporating them into their daily lives for everything from coding to content creation to customer service. If you need a fix while ChatGPT is in flux, our list of the best AI chatbots includes alternatives like Microsoft Copilot, Anthrophic's Claude, Perplexity AI, and Jasper. That list is worth perusing, as depending on your use of AI, you might find an option that works even better than OpenAI's.