Update at 11:35 a.m. ET: Issues with ChatGPT appear to have been resolved, with the service returning to normal and DownDetector showing reported errors dropping to moderate levels.

The ChatGPT service has been unreliable in recent hours and error messages appeared, especially when using the new search engine.

ChatGPT appeared to have an outage on Monday, just days after OpenAI built a search engine into the chatbot.

The website occasionally displayed the error message ‘404 Not Found’.

The DownDetector website also reported that “user reports point to potential issues with OpenAI,” with graphs showing a sharp spike in the number of errors reported.

The OpenAI status page reports no issues with the service yet.

ChatGPT search was launched last week, allowing users to search the web for information through the AI ​​chatbot. While ChatGPT has long had the ability to search the web for up-to-date information, the new facility allows users to click an icon to search online, rather than having to ask the AI ​​to do so.

The new search feature also provides richer results than previously available, for example showing restaurants on a map or showing photos of items you might be looking for.

The search feature is currently only available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers who pay $20 per month to access the service.

ChatGPT down again?

ChatGPT’s latest outage is the first notable disruption the service has suffered in a while, if the OpenAI status page is accurate.

On October 17 there was a major outage, but it lasted only twelve minutes. Before that, the most recent incident occurred on September 20, when there was a partial outage lasting a few hours.

ChatGPT faced a series of issues in August, although OpenAI claims the chatbot has had 99.84% uptime over the past 90 days.