ChatGPT, the highly popular chatbot from the artificial intelligence lab OpenAI, experienced periodic outages on Thursday due to an ongoing Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, according to OpenAI’s latest system update.
The company said it was “dealing with periodic outages due to an abnormal traffic pattern reflective of a DDoS attack” and that efforts were underway to mitigate the issue. However, disruptions could persist for some users in the near term.
The outages are a significant blow for ChatGPT, coming soon after OpenAI debuted its powerful new GPT-4 Turbo model earlier this week. While not a total outage like the DDoS attack on Wednesday that knocked ChatGPT entirely offline for a period, users worldwide reported disruptions today. OpenAI’s status page showed the ongoing “periodic outages” and cited the DDoS attack as the cause.
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DDoS attacks involve overwhelming websites and online services by flooding them with junk traffic until they crash. Hacker collective Anonymous Sudan claimed responsibility in media reports, purportedly citing OpenAI’s alleged pro-Israel bias as motivation. However, some conspiracy theorists also noted the timing coincided with OpenAI stealing thunder from Elon Musk’s launch of xAI’s Grok chatbot competitor, speculating Musk proponents could be behind it.
Nonetheless, the attack was the latest example of ChatGPT’s immense popularity, making it a target. As one of the hottest and most discussed AI innovations in years since launching in November 2022, ChatGPT has amassed millions of users with its ability to generate surprisingly human-like conversational text. Experts say its technology could transform industries like education, writing and customer service.
But whether due to ideologically motivated hackers like Anonymous Sudan or rival AI firms, ChatGPT’s vast reach also makes it vulnerable to attacks meant to disrupt its service. OpenAI will likely continue devoting extensive resources to fortifying ChatGPT’s systems against threats like DDoS attacks. For now, users may experience occasional downtime as the company works to restore stability fully.
