Is ChatGPT unable to generate images? OpenAI has confirmed the status that ChatGPT image generation is facing temporary disruption. They have confirmed that they are implementing a mitigation, which also cautioning that users may continue to face disruptions.
OpenAI's popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT, ran into trouble on Tuesday (7 July) evening, leaving users across several regions unable to use some of its core features. Image generation appeared to be the hardest hit, with many people reporting failed attempts, error messages, and long delays whenever they tried to create images.
Downdetector, which tracks service outages, recorded a sharp spike in complaints as the problems unfolded during the latter part of the day. Beyond image generation, some users also said they couldn't pull up their past conversations, and other chatbot functions appeared to be affected as well.
Despite the disruption, plenty of users found that ChatGPT's text-based capabilities kept working normally throughout the incident.
OpenAI has since confirmed the problem on its official status page, stating that its team is looking into what caused the outage.
On its official status dashboard, OpenAI confirmed that multiple services were affected by the outage. The company said it was investigating elevated error rates impacting ChatGPT along with other products, including Codex, Custom GPTs, workspace analytics and conversation search.
"Core functionality has been restored but we are aware of known and ongoing issues in FedRAMP workspaces with Codex, workspace analytics, conversation search, searching for custom GPTs, ChatGPT user invites, and the Compliance Logs Platform download endpoint. We are working to resolve these issues and will share further updates we have more information available," the company said on its status site.
The disruption comes as ChatGPT has become one of the world's most widely used AI chatbots for writing, coding, image generation and research. Even brief outages can affect students, developers, businesses and content creators who depend on it for everyday work. India is reportedly home to over 100 million weekly active users on ChatGPT, making the country OpenAI's largest market outside of the United States and accounting for roughly 11 per cent of the platform's global user base.
Following the reported issues, several users took to social media to share screenshots of failed image-generation requests and error messages, with many asking whether the issue was limited to their accounts.
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