Thousands of people around the world can’t use OpenAI’s ChatGPT because of a major technical outage. The issue has caused widespread login failures and strange error messages, leaving users locked out of their accounts and past chats.
How Widespread is the ChatGPT Outage?
According to the outage-tracking website Down Detector, the problem is global, with a major concentration of reports coming from the United States At the peak, over 12,500 users in the U.S. alone reported issues. According to the data, 93% of the issues were specific to ChatGPT, indicating that other OpenAI services continued to operate even if the chatbot was unavailable.
What Are Users Experiencing?
Affected users say they were suddenly logged out of their accounts. When they try to sign back in, many see an error saying: “Unusual activity has been detected from your device. Try again later.” This has completely blocked access to the service, including users’ past chat history.
Chatgpt has me locked out everywhere
Desktop and mobile.. anyone else experiencing issues?? pic.twitter.com/H4E8J08Dwx
— Sara Dietschy 🍑y (@saradietschy) December 2, 2025
What Does the Error Message Mean?
The “unusual activity” error is typically a security prompt from OpenAI’s systems. It can be triggered after large technical disruptions or surges in traffic that the company’s systems interpret as potentially suspicious. Although the warning is a common security precaution, the fact that it appears to a large number of authorized users indicates that there is a systemic issue with the service rather than problems with specific accounts.
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What is the Current Status?
The outage started suddenly, with user complaints rising sharply on Down Detector. OpenAI has not yet explained what caused the issue or when the service will fully return. The company’s status page remains the main place to find official updates as engineers work on fixing the problem.
