ChatGPT Hiccups AI Alternatives To Explore Now

OpenAI has announced that its API has seen a full recovery, and the company is actively "monitoring and working towards a full recovery of ChatGPT." If you've found ChatGPT less responsive today, you're not alone. The AI chatbot experienced a widespread outage affecting its service, with troubles reported as ongoing for 13 hours and thousands of reports increasing Tuesday morning. In the meantime, here are some other AI chatbots, image generators, and video generators you can use.

OpenAI's status page as of 1:30 pm. PT on June 10. ChatGPT / Screenshot by CNET

OpenAI's Response and Service Status

An OpenAI representative, responding to CNET via email, directed users to its status page. The page initially stated that OpenAI was experiencing "elevated errors and latency" and that it had identified the root cause and was working to mitigate the underlying issue.

"We have seen a full recovery in the API. We are monitoring and working towards a full recovery of ChatGPT," the latest update posted at 12:34 p.m. PT/3:34 p.m. ET said.

Its Sora tool for AI-generated videos was also down earlier, although an update posted at 5:28 a.m. PT stated, "All impacted services have now fully recovered."

The Downdetector service also shows outage reports starting around midnight and spiking several hours later. (Disclosure: Downdetector is owned by Ziff Davis, which is also the parent company of CNET.)

We are observing elevated error rates and latency across ChatGPT and the API. Our engineers have identified the root cause and are working as fast as possible to fix the issue. For updates see our status page: https://t.co/oUGSSyltRU

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) June 10, 2025

The Impact of ChatGPTs Popularity

Launched in 2022, ChatGPT has become the most popular AI application ever released, with 400 million weekly users. A barrage of generative AI competitors have followed, including Meta AI, Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot, but ChatGPT remains the leader largely because it's easy to use. During its Worldwide Developers Conference 2025 keynote on Monday, Apple even touted an expansion of its ChatGPT integration.

The AI chatbot uses learning algorithms and large-language models to process massive amounts of data from books and the internet, which it uses to deliver human-like responses to prompts from users. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

What Can You Do While OpenAI Is Down

Although OpenAI's ChatGPT may be among the most popular options, there are plenty of alternatives to use while it's down -- and many of them are free.

Chatbots

Claude is a current favorite chatbot among those tested, and according to CNET senior editor Jon Reed who covers AI, Claude was even aware of the details surrounding ChatGPT's outage.

Image generators

If you rely on ChatGPT's Dall-E 3 as your image generator, consider trying Leonardo.Ai for highly creative work and Canva for free, beginner-friendly image generation.

Video generators

If you're looking for an alternative to the Sora tool for AI-generated videos, Microsoft's Bing Video Creator is a recently checked-out option. It's reported to be super easy to use and is available on mobile now.