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‘ChatGPT is down’ is the new ‘dog ate my homework’—outages of the popular A.I. leave students and professionals alike scrambling 

BYPaolo Confino
Phone screen with the ChatGPT logo.
Users of ChatGPT have reported regular site outages since Tuesday.
NurPhoto

The rise of ChatGPT since its launch in November of last year led to much hand-wringing over students using it to write essays and workers phoning it in while A.I. did the real work. July 2023 offers a look at just how useful some people already find the tool, and the answer seems to be…very. 

The popular chatbot has been experiencing outages over the past day or so, leaving users scrambling and saying they’re struggling to do their homework. 

Reports of an outage spiked on Tuesday morning, peaking at 10:40 a.m. with about 5,400 reported crashes, according to the aptly named website Downdetector, which tracks the outages of various websites. A heatmap of the technical difficulties showed they were mostly concentrated in New York City and an area of Kansas that appears close to Wichita. 

When Fortune tried to login to ChatGPT, it received an error message reading, “Our systems are a bit busy at the moment, please take a break and try again soon.” When contacted for comment, OpenAI said there were no updates to share at the moment and advised Fortune to monitor its status page. 

One student—likely struggling to take the aforementioned break—found themselves faced with a deadline right as their trusty A.I. study partner was out of commission. 

Several realized they might have to write a paper the old-fashioned way, i.e., with their own critical thinking skills. 

In January, OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, launched a feature that would spot content written using the tool, after educators complained about the potential for rampant plagiarizing in the classroom. Questions about the tool’s efficacy arose when an author (and longtime proprietor of the blog AI Weirdness) found her own book flagged as likely having been written by A.I.

ChatGPT has sparked considerable debate in classrooms. Proponents argue teachers can’t bury their heads in the sand about an emerging technology that will almost certainly become a staple in schools and workplaces, while detractors feel it can stunt critical thinking and encourage shortcuts.   

Meanwhile, during the outage some professionals were also loath to return to the days before ChatGPT boosted their productivity. 

Despite this user’s claim that ChatGPT has made her “four times faster” at her job, experts believe A.I. will be subject to the “productivity paradox,” where widespread gains in productivity will lag adoption of the actual technology. One expert says workers are hiding the fact that they use ChatGPT to do their job over fears they might get laid off if their boss realized A.I. could do it instead. 

However, generative A.I. aficionados shouldn’t fret too much. There are still plenty of other options available—even if they’re not as buzzy, as one Twitter user points out. 

In June, ChatGPT’s website saw its first-ever month-over-month declines in website traffic—down 9.7%—and unique visitors—down 5.7%, according to data from web analytics company Similarweb. Analysts’ views varied on the cause. Some argued that the novelty was wearing off, while others highlighted ChatGPT’s relevance to students, arguing that summer vacation meant a big chunk of the user base no longer needed the tool.

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