OpenAI’s ChatGPT experienced a service disruption Monday as users around the world reported network errors, slow responses and problems starting or continuing tasks.The company acknowledged the incident on its official status page, describing it as a partial outage and saying it had identified elevated latency affecting the impacted services. OpenAI said it was working on implementing a mitigation.Is ChatGPT down right now?OpenAI confirmed that ChatGPT was experiencing an active incident on Monday.According to the company's status page, users across multiple subscription plans could be unable to start or continue tasks in ChatGPT Work. In an earlier update, OpenAI said Plus users were particularly affected and that Work mode was unavailable.The company did not immediately disclose the underlying cause of the outage or provide an estimated time for full recovery.OpenAI's status page said: “We have identified that users are experiencing elevated latency for the impacted services.”The company added that it was working on implementing a mitigation.Downdetector data showed a significant increase in complaints about OpenAI services during the incident, with ChatGPT accounting for the majority of reported problems.ChatGPT Work particularly affectedThe outage appeared to be concentrated around ChatGPT Work, with OpenAI warning that users on multiple subscription plans could experience problems.The company's status page initially said Plus users were “particularly impacted” and that Work mode was unavailable. A later update broadened the description, saying users across multiple subscription plans might be unable to start or continue tasks in ChatGPT Work.That distinction is important because the disruption did not necessarily mean that every ChatGPT user was completely unable to access the service.OpenAI reports availability metrics at an aggregate level across subscription tiers, models and error types. As a result, the experience can differ depending on the user's plan, model and feature being used.OpenAI APIs and Codex remained operationalThe incident was focused on ChatGPT rather than an outage affecting every OpenAI service.OpenAI's status dashboard showed ChatGPT as the affected component, while its APIs and Codex were listed as operational at the time of the incident.This meant developers relying on OpenAI's API infrastructure could potentially continue working even as some ChatGPT users encountered errors.The distinction is particularly relevant for businesses that use OpenAI services through different products rather than accessing ChatGPT directly.How long will the ChatGPT outage last?OpenAI had identified the issue but had not initially provided a specific timeline for a full resolution.The incident was marked “Identified” and “Partial outage” on OpenAI's status page. The company said it was implementing a mitigation and monitoring the situation.For users who continue to encounter errors, checking OpenAI's official status page is the best way to determine whether the problem is a broader service disruption or an issue limited to an individual account or feature.ChatGPT outage follows another disruptionMonday's incident came only days after another ChatGPT Work-related problem.On August 27, OpenAI reported elevated error rates affecting ChatGPT Work and Workspace Agents on the web and mobile. The company subsequently applied a mitigation and said all affected services had fully recovered.The recurrence of problems affecting workplace features comes as businesses increasingly rely on ChatGPT for research, writing, coding, analysis and other daily tasks.ChatGPT uptime was 99.67% from June to AugustOpenAI's status dashboard reported 99.67% uptime for ChatGPT during the June-August period.For comparison, the dashboard reported 99.94% uptime for OpenAI's APIs and 99.98% for Codex over the same period.Those figures cover a broad range of subscription tiers, models and error types, meaning the aggregate uptime figure does not necessarily reflect the experience of an individual user.Even a relatively short outage can therefore have a noticeable effect when a service is being used for time-sensitive work.Why the ChatGPT outage mattersChatGPT is no longer used only for casual questions.Consumers use it for writing, research, planning and information searches, while businesses increasingly rely on it for coding, content creation, analysis and workplace tasks.That makes service interruptions more noticeable than they might have been when generative AI tools were primarily experimental.Monday's disruption also illustrates an important distinction between OpenAI's different products. A problem affecting ChatGPT does not necessarily mean that the company's API or other developer services are also unavailable.