The technical failure that threw ChatGPT out of sync

The problems with ChatGPT began worldwide on Wednesday morning when some API models showed “increased error rates.”

During the outage, users had difficulty accessing the chatbot as the platform was affected by a massive internal outage.

Notably, the GenAI giant currently has over 200 million users worldwide, of which more than 9% are in India, making the country its second largest market.

In the early hours of Wednesday (September 18), OpenAI's conversational AI chatbot ChatGPT experienced a “partial outage” that affected users worldwide.

According to the company, the issue began around 3:50 p.m. PDT (4:20 a.m. IST) when some API models showed “increased error rates.” However, the partial outage did not reach Indian shores until hours later in the morning when users reported problems accessing the chatbot.

The company has since announced that the problem has been resolved.

According to DownDetector, 24 reports of the outage were received from India starting at around 9:30 am. By noon, the number of reports had risen to 54 before dropping again and rising to around 48 reports by 5:30 pm. According to the website, users in all major cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Indore and others, reported problems accessing ChatGPT.

However, this is not the first time the company has been affected by a technical glitch. On September 16, all API requests on the platform were blocked and users had problems creating new accounts and logging in.

Additionally, ChatGPT's web interface was experiencing issues with a version of Google Chrome in particular, as noted on OpenAI's status page.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT Enterprise users were experiencing issues with the Workspace Analytics tab not returning any data.

Most notably, the GenAI giant currently has over 200 million users worldwide, of which India accounts for more than 9%, making India the second-largest market for the company. To strengthen its presence in India, OpenAI hired Pragyya Misra, a former Meta and Truecaller employee, in April to lead public policy and partnerships in the country.

The development comes at a time when India’s GenAI ecosystem has attracted significant interest from investors. India is now home to more than 100 generative AI startups, which together raised over 600 million USD since 2019. Olas Krutrim also became the country's first AI unicorn earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the Indian government has also taken a proactive approach and supported the IndiaAI mission with a Budgetary allocation of INR 10,372 Cr in the next five years.

The aim of this funding is to promote innovation in the national AI ecosystem and to achieve the mission objectives through a public-private partnership (PPP) model.

According to a report by Inc42, India’s generative AI market is set to grow rapidly. Forecasts suggest USD 1.1 billion in 2023 to over USD 17 billion by 2030with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48%.