ChatGPT experiences widespread outage, users report errors and missing conversation history

On 12 July 2026, OpenAI’s ChatGPT service faced a significant stability problem that affected both the web interface and mobile app. Users encountered internal‑server error messages, complete service‑unavailable screens, and an inability to load saved conversation histories. The disruption extended to paid Plus and Enterprise plans, which normally receive priority access. Monitoring platforms recorded a sharp rise in complaints, indicating a global impact. OpenAI’s engineering team attributed the issue to heavy infrastructure updates or an unexpected surge in requests and began emergency maintenance to redistribute traffic and restore the APIs.

The outage highlighted the growing reliance on generative AI tools for productivity, prompting users to switch temporarily to alternatives such as Claude or Gemini while the service was restored.