ChatGPT Briefly Went Down, and People Were Really Freaked out About It

Since its introduction to the public in 2022, ChatGPT has slowly become an important part of many people's day-to-day lives. That's why so many people were upset when they discovered that the app was down in January of 2025.

Following the discovery that the platform was down, many wanted to better understand what happened to ChatGPT, and whether it's likely to happen again. Here's what we know.

ChatGPT went down on Jan. 23 and provided an update on its status page saying that the platform was “currently experiencing elevated error rates in the API." OpenAI, the company that runs ChatGPT, said that they were looking into the issue, and the issue appears to have been resolved relatively quickly. OpenAI followed by saying that a "fix has been implemented," adding that they were continuing to monitor the results.

While there was some lag between the implementation of that fix and the app coming back online, it now seems to be working well. While we don't know exactly what caused the issue, it seems like whatever it was was not fatal enough to keep the app offline for an extended period. ChatGPT requires a massive amount of computing power to function, so users should be thankful that the issue wasn't more serious.

Many of the users who tried to access ChatGPT got an error telling them that it was a bad gateway, which led many to wonder what that error message means. A bad gateway message means that two servers produced an error when trying to communicate with one another. Basically, it suggests that your web server is not able to connect to the server that hosts ChatGPT.

While that error can sometimes be caused by the person trying to access the website, in this case it was an issue with ChatGPT that kept the app from appearing for users on the front end. Thankfully, though, it wasn't the kind of systemic issue that might have kept the platform out of commission for a longer stretch of time. As we found out during the relatively brief downtime the app experienced, many people have come to rely on it.

"ChatGPT is down and I'm coding right now," one person wrote accompanied by a GIF of a person crying.

"Bruh ChatGPT is down again??? During the work day? So you’re telling me I have to… THINK?!" another person added.

What seems clear is that many people had come to rely on the platform specifically to get them through their work days, only to find themselves somewhat at a loss when it went down.

ChatGPT has only been around for a couple years, but in that time, people have gotten very used to relying on it for a variety of simple and routine tasks. That might make it difficult for many if the app goes down for an extended period, but thankfully, that's not what happened this time.