ChatGPT reportedly experiences massive downtime, users complain about flashing of 'an error occurred' text

Chat GPT - Source: Getty
Chat GPT official logo (Image via Getty)

On June 10, 2025, people all over the globe saw the annoying message "An error occurred" flash across the web and mobile interfaces when they attempted to utilize ChatGPT. Reports on Downdetector and other media say that users said the service was worthless when the error warning showed up and then went away quickly.

This incident, which is the most recent in a spate of high-profile outages that have sometimes made it hard to get to OpenAI's primary chatbot, has raised questions about how reliable the platform is when there is a lot of traffic.


ChatGPT reportedly experiences massive downtime, users complain: more details

During the daytime, as per The Sun, Downdetector saw a sharp rise in the number of error reports. People were upset because the "An error occurred" banner was flashing, and they couldn't make new answers. In only two hours, around 26,000 subscribers said they were having trouble, making it one of the largest outages since December 2024.

The OpenAI status website confirmed an ongoing investigation into the high mistake rates of ChatGPT and related services. Many users reported that the service was generally restored within 2-3 hours. However, the error message would flash occasionally for a few more hours. During strong demand, ChatGPT suffered an outage, although OpenAI reported at 15:10 UTC that all services were back up and running.

People in the US, EU, AJ, and AU were all afflicted by the outage, and the error flash patterns were the same all across the world. Many customers, including students and professional writers, encountered a stop in their workflows after employing the AI tool for brainstorming or research aid.

Apps that use APIs, online tutors, and customer service bots all had problems or stopped working completely. Within minutes, the hashtag #ChatGPTDown became popular on X. People posted pictures of the error's flashing effect.

ChatGPT can handle millions of inquiries per second because of its strong design. During times of high demand, which happen regularly during normal business hours in several time zones, overloaded servers might give generic error messages instead of a steady decline. The client interface will attempt to reconnect users by starting a session over and over again.

The "An error occurred" message that shows up every time you try to connect is what makes the screen flash quickly. Small differences in configuration between backend systems and content delivery networks (CDNs) might cause frontend clients to get incorrect or conflicting error statuses, which makes the flicker effect worse.

The state of OpenAI is a must-have tool if you want to know whether an issue is local or global. It offers you real-time information on how your system is doing. Hard refreshing (Ctrl + F5 / Cmd + Shift + R) appears to cure the problem, at least temporarily, according to multiple people. This allows the client to get the most up-to-date settings.

Some savvy users bypass overloaded servers by connecting to less busy data centers using VPNs linked to other zones. Because premium tiers receive priority routing during high loads, ChatGPT Plus customers frequently encounter fewer disruptions. OpenAI still recommends Plus for mission-critical use cases.

Edited by Anshika Jain