Simultaneous Outages Hit Major AI Chatbots Globally

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On Thursday, major AI chatbots including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok experienced simultaneous outages, preventing thousands of users worldwide from accessing services or using key features. The disruptions, confirmed by the companies, caused widespread service interruptions before gradual recovery was reported.[AI generated]

Why's our monitor labelling this an incident or hazard?

The event involves AI systems (ChatGPT, Claude, Grok) malfunctioning and causing widespread service disruption, which is a direct harm to users' ability to access and use the AI services. Although no physical harm or legal violations are reported, the disruption of a critical AI service affecting thousands of users constitutes a harm under the definition of AI Incident (disruption of operation of AI systems impacting users). The malfunction is confirmed by the companies and is ongoing, meeting the criteria for an AI Incident rather than a hazard or complementary information.[AI generated]
AI principles
Robustness & digital security
Industries
Consumer services
Affected stakeholders
Consumers
Harm types
Economic/Property
Business function:
Citizen/customer service
AI system task:
Interaction support/chatbots

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