AI

AI apocalypse? ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity all went down at the same time

Comment

pattern of openAI logo
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

After a multi-hour outage that took place in the early hours of the morning, OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot went down again — but this time, it wasn’t the only AI provider affected. On Tuesday morning, both Anthropic’s Claude and Perplexity began seeing issues, too, but these were more quickly resolved.

Google’s Gemini appears to be operating at present, though it may have also briefly gone offline, according to some user reports.

It’s unusual for three major AI providers to all be down at the same time, which could signal a broader infrastructure issue or internet-scale problem, such as those that affect multiple social media sites simultaneously, for example. It’s also possible that Claude and Perplexity’s issues were not due to bugs or other issues, but from receiving too much traffic in a short period of time due to ChatGPT’s outage.

On ChatGPT’s landing page, the ability to message the AI chatbot was not working during its outage. The issue began around 7:33 AM PT and resolved around 10:17 AM PT — another multi-hour outage.

Image Credits: OpenAI/ChatGPT landing page down

At one point during the outage, ChatGPT’s website was updated to indicate the service was at capacity — in pirate speak, no less — and offered to notify users when it was back online.

Image Credits: OpenAI/capacity message

Claude’s website had been displaying an error with a message that reads: “An error occurred in the Server Components render. The specific message is omitted in production builds to avoid leaking sensitive details. A digest property is included on this error instance which may provide additional details about the nature of the error.”

The site then advises to “try again.”

Claude started working again sometime after 12:10 p.m. ET.

Image Credits: Anthropic/Claude down

Perplexity’s site was also serving the over-capacity message that would appear when the service receives too many requests. It said “We’ll be right back” and “We’re getting a lot of questions right now and have reached our capacity. Please come back soon.”

The site resumed functioning around the time that Claude’s outage was resolved but has been intermittently up and down since.

Image Credits: Perplexity / outage

Of note, ChatGPT had only recently resolved a lengthy outage that affected its service overnight. The chatbot had been down for users around the world during the early morning hours (Pacific Time), leading to complaints across X and Threads. The company’s status page signaled a bug was being fixed and the issue was being monitored around 12:21 a.m. PT.

As of 7:33 a.m. PT, the status page has been updated to say that ChatGPT is once again unavailable for some users and that OpenAI is “currently investigating this issue.” The chatbot was still down as of 12:28 p.m. ET, per its status page, which has flagged it as a “major outage.” The issues were fixed several hours later.

Image Credits: OpenAI status page

The AI providers did not immediately return requests for comment or more information on the outages, but we’ll update as more information becomes available.

The AI outages are not the only online disruptions occurring at present. Forbes is also reporting a zero-day spam attack taking place on TikTok, which is currently affecting select celebrity and brand accounts, including Paris Hilton and CNN.

Post updated after publication on June 4, 2024, at 12:20 p.m, 1:35 p.m. ET as Claude and Perplexity came back online, followed by ChatGPT.

More TechCrunch

So-called “unlearning” techniques are used to make a generative AI model forget specific and undesirable info it picked up from training data, like sensitive private data or copyrighted material. But…

Making AI models ‘forget’ undesirable data hurts their performance

Uber is now letting riders in India to book up to three rides simultaneously.

Uber now lets users in India book three trips at once

U.S. airports are rolling out facial recognition to scan travelers’ faces before boarding their flights. Americans, at least, can opt out. 

How to opt out of facial recognition at airports (if you’re American)

The promise of AI and large language models (LLMs) is the ability to understand increasingly wider amounts of context and make sense of that information easily, so it makes sense…

Bee AI raises $7M for its wearable AI assistant that learns from your conversations

Featured Article

DEI backlash: Stay up-to-date on the latest legal and corporate challenges

It’s clear that this year will be a turning point for DEI.

DEI backlash: Stay up-to-date on the latest legal and corporate challenges

Bike-taxi startup Rapido, which counts Swiggy among its investors, is the latest Indian firm to become a unicorn.

India’s Rapido becomes a unicorn with fresh $120M funding

Government websites aren’t known for cutting-edge tech. GovWell co-founder and CTO Ben Cohen discovered this while trying to help his dad, a contractor, apply for building permits. Cohen worked as…

GovWell is bringing automation and efficiency to local governments

Critics have long argued that wararantless device searches at the U.S. border are unconstitutional and violate the Fourth Amendment.

US border agents must get warrant before cell phone searches, federal court rules

Featured Article

UK’s Zapp EV plans to expand globally with an early start in India

Zapp is launching its urban electric two-wheeler in India in 2025 as it plans to expand globally.

UK’s Zapp EV plans to expand globally with an early start in India

The first time I saw Google’s latest commercial, I wondered, “Is it just me, or is this kind of bad?” By the fourth or fifth time I saw it, I’d…

Dear Google, who wants an AI-written fan letter?

Featured Article

MatPat, the first big YouTuber to successfully exit his company, is lobbying for creators on Capitol Hill

Though MatPat retired from YouTube, he’s still pretty busy. In fact, he’s been spending a lot of time on Capitol Hill.

MatPat, the first big YouTuber to successfully exit his company, is lobbying for creators on Capitol Hill

Featured Article

A tale of two foldables

Samsung is still foldables’ 500-pound gorilla, but the company successes have made the category significantly less lonely in recent years.

A tale of two foldables

The California Department of Motor Vehicles this week granted Nuro approval to test its third-generation R3 autonomous delivery vehicle in four Bay Area cities, giving the AV startup a positive…

Autonomous delivery startup Nuro is gearing up for a comeback

With Ghostery turning 15 years old this month, TechCrunch caught up with CEO Jean-Paul Schmetz to discuss the company’s strategy and the state of ad tracking.

Ghostery’s CEO says regulation won’t save us from ad trackers

Two years ago, workers at an Apple Store in Towson, Maryland, were the first to establish a formally recognized union at an Apple retail store in the United States. Now…

Apple reaches its first contract agreement with a US retail union

OpenAI is testing SearchGPT, a new AI search experience to compete directly with Google. The feature aims to elevate search queries with “timely answers” from across the internet and allows…

OpenAI comes for Google with SearchGPT

Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX announced on Saturday a controversial plan to “socialize” the $230 million loss from its recent security breach among all its customers, a move that has sent…

WazirX to ‘socialize’ $230M security breach loss among customers

Featured Article

Stay up-to-date on the amount of venture dollars going to underrepresented founders

Stay up-to-date on the latest funding news for Black and women founders.

Stay up-to-date on the amount of venture dollars going to underrepresented founders

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. Commerce Department agency that develops and tests tech for the U.S. government, companies and the broader public, has re-released a…

NIST releases a tool for testing AI model risk

Featured Article

Max Space reinvents expandable habitats with a 17th-century twist, launching in 2026

Max Space’s expandable habitats promise to be larger, stronger, and more versatile than anything like them ever launched, not to mention cheaper and lighter by far than a solid, machined structure.

Max Space reinvents expandable habitats with a 17th-century twist, launching in 2026

Payments giant Stripe has acquired a four-year-old competitor, Lemon Squeezy, the latter company announced Friday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As a merchant of record, Lemon Squeezy calculates…

Stripe acquires payment processing startup Lemon Squeezy

iCloud Private Relay has not been working for some Apple users across major markets, including the U.S., Europe, India and Japan.

Apple reports iCloud Private Relay global outages for some users

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. To get Startups Weekly in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. This…

Legal tech, VC brawls and saying no to big offers

Apple joins 15 other tech companies — including Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — that committed to the White House’s rules for developing generative AI.

Apple signs the White House’s commitment to AI safety

The language is ambiguous, so it’s not clear whether X is helping itself to all user data for training Grok or whether this processing refers only to user interactions with…

Privacy watchdog says it’s ‘surprised’ by Elon Musk opting user data into Grok AI training

Sound Search on TikTok is somewhat similar to YouTube Music’s song detection tool that lets you find the name of a song by singing, humming or playing it. 

TikTok rolls out a new feature that lets you find songs by singing or humming them

Skip, a wearable tech startup that began as a secretive project inside Alphabet, exited stealth this week to announce a partnership with outdoor clothing specialist Arc’teryx. The deal is the…

Alphabet X spinoff partners with Arc’teryx to bring ‘everyday’ exoskeleton to market

Ledger, a French startup mostly known for its secure crypto hardware wallets, has launched a new mid-range device, the Ledger Flex. Available now, priced at $249, the dinky hardware wallet…

Ledger launches Ledger Flex, a mid-range hardware crypto wallet

The good news is that you can switch off the new data-sharing setting and also delete your conversation history with the AI. 

Here’s how to disable X (Twitter) from using your data to train its Grok AI

Regulators gave SpaceX the all-clear to return to launch two weeks after the Falcon 9 rocket experienced an anomaly on orbit.

SpaceX cleared to resume Falcon 9 launches while FAA investigation remains open