ChatGPT Servers Go Down Again, New User Signups Suspended

ChatGPT is down, and subscriptions to its premium Plus service seem to have been suspended as OpenAI struggles with "high demand." The premium service, which costs $20 per month, comes with a list of supposed benefits. This includes the ability to use ChatGPT during peak times when logins are paused for free users. It also allows access to GPT 4, ChatGPT's latest and most advanced model.

OpenAI's Status page claims the tool has been down since shortly before 10 a.m. PT on March 20. The company claimed to be investigating before concluding that the issues were due to "an unintentional reduction in available capacity." The last update claims that capacity is being added in other areas while the company is looking into what caused the initial drop in capacity, which has led to the ongoing issues. 

The drop in service hasn't gone down well with ChatGPT's paying customers. Many have taken to social media sites, like Twitter and Reddit to complain about the downtime and their inability to access the service — with several calling for refunds or some other kind of compensation.

The current problems may have been foreshadowed by the way ChatGPT was managing premium users' access to GPT4. Getting responses from the highly advanced model was frustratingly slow for some users, which led to ChatGPT pulling back on how much its premium subscribers could use the highly anticipated model.

Initially, users could communicate with GPT4 100 times every four hours. This was scaled back to 50 times every four hours shortly afterward, and then 25 times every three hours with a promise of further reductions this week. The issue also appears to be affecting multiple OpenAI products, instead of just ChatGPT. Dall-E, the popular AI imaging tool, is also struggling — with users being told its servers are at capacity.

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Some "Plus" members can still get past the login page by going directly to the URL new chats use, but will find that they are unable to see their history or click messages. The page will also not recognize that a user has a plus subscription. Curiously, clicking the signup button and hovering over the upgrade link results in a message that claims upgrades Plus subscriptions have been temporarily paused. Capacity issues have plagued the language model, and others like it for a while. While OpenAi has yet to release a statement about its suspension of premium accounts, it is possible the company may try to give themselves a break while they make their flagship product a bit more stable.