Observed Signal · Nov 8, 2023 · Service Outage · Source: Trending Topics · Impact: 4/5 · Sentiment: Negative
OpenAI and ChatGPT Hit by Major Service Outage
On November 8, 2023, OpenAI experienced a major outage affecting ChatGPT, its developer API, and the Whisper speech-to-text service, starting around 15:00 CET and lasting more than an hour. OpenAI confirmed high error rates in both the API and ChatGPT and said it was working on a fix. The root cause was not disclosed; Microsoft Azure, on which OpenAI heavily relies, showed no problems. The incident occurred two days after the launch of GPT-4 Turbo, suggesting a possible surge in user demand. Numerous enterprise clients integrating GPT-3.5/GPT-4—including Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Duolingo, and Klarna—were impacted, underscoring the risks of building critical systems on a single AI provider. Bing Chat, also GPT-4-based, remained unaffected.
A major outage at foundational AI infrastructure (OpenAI) disrupted numerous enterprise and consumer applications relying on GPT-3.5/GPT-4 APIs, exposing significant systemic dependency risks in the AI ecosystem relevant to AdTech and MarTech stacks.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- OpenAI's ChatGPT and API suffered a major outage on November 8, 2023, beginning around 15:00 CET.
- The outage lasted over one hour and also affected the Whisper speech-to-text function.
- OpenAI acknowledged high error rates in both API and ChatGPT and stated it was working on fixes.
- Microsoft Azure, OpenAI's cloud infrastructure, showed no issues during the outage.
- Companies including Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Duolingo, and Klarna that integrate OpenAI products were affected; Bing Chat was not.
Connected Companies & Entities
6 Entities mapped“OpenAI has just given the all-clear around 5 PM; problems with OpenAI API and ChatGPT are said to be resolved. OpenAI acknowledged high erro...”
“OpenAI relies heavily on Microsoft's Azure cloud, which generally showed no problems at the time....”
“More and more companies, including Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Duolingo, and Klarna, use OpenAI products and will notice the outage....”
“More and more companies, including Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Duolingo, and Klarna, use OpenAI products and will notice the outage....”
“More and more companies, including Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Duolingo, and Klarna, use OpenAI products and will notice the outage....”
“More and more companies, including Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Duolingo, and Klarna, use OpenAI products and will notice the outage....”
Ontology Mapping & Concepts
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