OpenAI acknowledged the disruption, saying it was investigating elevated error rates affecting ChatGPT and several other services. (Image: Reuters)OpenAI’s sensational AI chatbot, ChatGPT, faced a service disruption on Tuesday evening. Hundreds of users from multiple regions reported that they faced issues while accessing features, especially image generation. The outage-tracking platform, Downdetector, reported that the outage led to a surge in complaints. However, OpenAI has acknowledged the issue on its official status page and has said that it is investigating the disruption. The complaints began surfacing on Downdetector in the second half of the day, with many claiming that they were unable to generate AI images. Each time they tried, the chatbot either returned error messages or took too long to process requests. Some users even found difficulty with accessing older conversations along with other ChatGPT features. Regardless, text-based use cases continued to work for many users. 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.Also Read | OpenAI may cut AI subscription prices as Anthropic rivalry intensifies: Report“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.Also Read | OpenAI teases first hardware product, set to launch July 15Following 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. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s status page continues to provide live updates on the incident.