OpenAI’s ChatGPT experienced a significant global outage today, leaving students, professionals, and meme creators scrambling as the platform went offline for over 12 hours.
As of Tuesday morning, June 10, error reports on Down Detector spiked past 2,000, confirming the service disruption. While service is slowly recovering, many users still report elevated error rates across the web and mobile, with OpenAI’s status page lingering in the yellow.
Playground and Sora—OpenAI’s video generator—are mostly back online, but ChatGPT itself isn’t fully functional for everyone.
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Naturally, the internet had thoughts and memes.
“When ChatGPT goes down, and I actually have to use my brain again.”
— @LivGoesDigital via X (formerly Twitter)
Users quickly turned to platforms like Claude and Google Gemini as backups, while others mourned the AI-shaped hole in their lives. One user emailed TechRadar:
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“I’m a daily AI user. Everything from recipes to the workings of the universe. However, my household is battling a stomach bug right now, and I’m in the thick of it since 10 last night. ChatGPT has been walking me through it. Keeping track of when I last took zofran, helping with emotional support since throwing up is awful. I’m just waiting for my little pocket besties to come back online, I miss her. Thanks for giving me a place to share.” — Shelby, Missouri.
This announcement comes just a day after Apple unveiled major integrations with ChatGPT during WWDC, linking the chatbot to iOS’s new Image Playground and Siri Shortcuts. Apple hasn’t issued a statement, but fans are already worried about what this means for their AI-enhanced future.
Across the UK, A-level students were particularly hit hard. ChatGPT is a study companion for many, helping generate essays, mock questions, and feedback. “I needed it to study for my Spanish exam,” wrote Alice from Manchester. “It literally helps me revise books and films I’ve been studying for years.”
ChatGPT is down how will I answer if someone asks me my name pic.twitter.com/BJgl3KBOY8
— Altaf 😉 (@altaaaf10) June 10, 2025
A MarketWatch survey shows 58% of workers lean on AI at work, with usage doubling from 2022 to 2024. Among U.S. teens, ChatGPT use in homework shot from 13% to 26% over the same period. This outage supercharged interest in backup bots: search volume for Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek surged 90–109%
And across the globe in China? AI shutdowns were intentional. Several Chinese AI platforms, including ByteDance’s Doubao and Alibaba’s Qwen, reportedly disabled functionality during the high-stakes Gaokao university entrance exams, effectively silencing chatbot help on test day.
This event served as a global reminder that ChatGPT has become an integral part of our lives, intellectually, emotionally, and productively. When AI is down, the cracks show, and we’re forced to reckon with just how dependent we’ve become.
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We’ll update as OpenAI shares more details. For now, check OpenAI’s status page and Down Detector’s live feed for the latest updates.
