OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Sora Bounce Back After Major Outage: What Happened and What’s Next?
- OpenAI experienced a significant outage on December 26, 2024, affecting ChatGPT, Sora, and its APIs.
- Services were disrupted for several hours, with recovery completed by late evening.
- OpenAI is conducting a root-cause analysis to prevent future issues. Learn about the timeline, impact, and what this means for users in our detailed coverage.

OpenAI’s popular AI tools, including ChatGPT, the text-to-video generator Sora, and its suite of APIs, have largely recovered following a significant outage on December 26, 2024. Users worldwide experienced high error rates that left many scrambling for answers as OpenAI worked to resolve the issue.
The Outage: What Went Wrong?
The outage reportedly began around 11:00 AM PST on December 26, affecting services across multiple regions. OpenAI posted updates throughout the day, informing users about the disruptions.
At its height, outage monitoring site Downdetector recorded over 1,500 reports from India and more than 2,300 reports from the U.S., with New York users being particularly affected.
Recovery Timeline
OpenAI’s recovery efforts spanned several hours:
- 10:40 AM PST: Outage began. High error rates affecting ChatGPT, Sora, and parts of OpenAI APIs.
- 2:58 PM PST: Sora recovery began
- 3:05 PM PST: OpenAI APIs began to stabilize.
- 8:16 PM PST: ChatGPT came back to full functionality.
Although the downtime for ChatGPT was for about three hours, Sora faced almost four hours of partial outage. The team of OpenAI made sure to reassure the users that all the issues were being sorted out.A
later statement from OpenAI indicated a root-cause analysis to be done, with an openness to the findings once it was complete.
What is Sora?
Sora is one of the newly developed text-to-video generators by OpenAI, which has captured more subscribers. Its entry finds Google announcing Veo 2, an upgraded video creation tool powered by AI technology. The outage of Sora, which occurred this early after its general launch, has raised concern over this platform among the creative producers who depend on it.
Implications for Users
It had brought a halt to the work flow of both individuals and businesses, most of which use the tool for creating content, customer support, and brainstorming. This partial downtime of Sora proved to be a challenge to the users who experimented with AI-driven video creation-its relatively newly popular feature in content marketing.
Well, at least for now, with the return of ChatGPT, Sora, and APIs to work, the AI community has caught its breath. Such incidents remind us of the importance of strong infrastructure while more and more AI begins to be woven into everyday workflows.
Share this post

Rajat N
Web Designer and Digital Marketing Manager with 3+ years of experience at Vibrant Marketer. Skilled in crafting visually appealing and user-friendly websites. Also proficient in content writing and graphic design to enhance brand visibility.