OpenAI's AI chatbot ChatGPT experienced service outages on December 2nd and 3rd, causing some users to be unable to use the service normally. The failure mainly affected the web version of ChatGPT, with many users encountering service unresponsiveness or inability to load when trying to interact through their browsers.

By comparison, the ChatGPT Mac desktop client ran smoothly during this period without being affected, indicating that the problem may have been related to OpenAI's Web server or associated network infrastructure.

The first failure occurred at 2:08 AM Beijing Time on December 2nd, and OpenAI immediately took mitigation measures. It began monitoring the recovery situation at 2:37 AM and confirmed that the issue was fully resolved by 3:00 AM the same day. However, the service outage did not last long, as problems reoccurred on the 3rd, with a message indicating "increased ChatGPT error rate." This issue started at 3:26 AM Beijing Time on December 3rd and was fully resolved by 4:12 AM.

In a statement to CNBC, OpenAI explained the cause of the failure, stating that it was due to a routing configuration error, which caused some users to experience issues while using ChatGPT. However, the problem has now been fixed, and users can resume normal use. According to Downdetector, approximately 3,000 users reported issues during the failure. Although this incident caused inconvenience for some users, the overall impact was limited and did not spread to all users or all platforms.

Key Points:  

🌐 Impact of the Failure: The web version of ChatGPT experienced service outages on December 2nd and 3rd, primarily affecting browser users.  

🔧 Cause of the Failure: OpenAI stated that a routing configuration error caused some users to be unable to use the service normally.  

📈 Service Recovery: After timely repairs, users have now resumed normal use of ChatGPT.