On June 10, 2025, at 12:15 PM IST, ChatGPT went dark, leaving millions in India and beyond staring at error messages like “Something went wrong” or “Network error.” For over 10 hours, OpenAI’s flagship chatbot, along with its Sora video generator and API services, was down, with full recovery only by 4:00 AM IST on June 11. As someone who’s probably leaned on ChatGPT for a quick email draft or coding help, I feel the pain—this outage hit hard.
What Went Wrong?
The outage struck globally, with India reporting heavy disruptions. DownDetector logged hundreds of complaints, 88% tied to ChatGPT’s core functions and 9% to its mobile app. Imagine students prepping for exams, developers mid-project, or small businesses relying on AI-powered apps—all stuck. One X user in Mumbai posted, “ChatGPT down? My productivity’s on life support!” Another quipped, “Back to Google like it’s 2019.”
OpenAI’s status page flagged “elevated error rates and latency” early on, hinting at server-side chaos. While they haven’t spilled the beans on the cause,
techies speculate:
Server Overload: ChatGPT’s 400 million weekly users might’ve swamped OpenAI’s Microsoft Azure-powered infrastructure. Some saw “Too many concurrent requests” errors.
Network Glitch: Azure’s past outages (like December 2024) suggest a possible upstream failure.
Backend Bug: With complex models like GPT-4o, a software hiccup could’ve snowballed.No signs of a cyberattack, unlike a 2023 DDoS incident, but OpenAI’s staying tight-lipped.
Tech Lessons
This outage screams for better systems:
Redundancy: OpenAI needs more robust servers or failover mechanisms. A single point of failure won’t cut it.
Load Balancing: Distributing traffic across global data centers could prevent overloads.
Transparency: OpenAI’s updates were timely but vague. A root-cause analysis (promised soon) better deliver answers.Local Options: Offline AI models could save the day for critical tasks.
Takeaways: Keep alternative AI tools handy, explore offline options, and demand clear communication from OpenAI.