Sam Altman Stunned As ChatGPT Upgrade Exceeds Expectations, Meanwhile There's Possibility Of A DDoS Attack Amid Service Disruptions

Earlier this week, during its developer event, DevDay, ChatGPT-parent, and OpenAI, launched significant upgrades to the GPT-4 language model, and now its usage has exceeded the expectations of even Sam Altman. 

What Happened: On Wednesday, Altman took to X (formerly Twitter) and informed his over 1.9 million followers that using their new features from DevDay has been "far outpacing" their expectations. 

He further revealed that OpenAI had plans to go live with GPTs for all subscribers on Monday, but that got delayed. "We are hoping to soon." 

See Also: ChatGPT Creator Sam Altman Raises AI Anxiety With Latest Prediction Involving ‘Very Strange Outcomes’

Altman also informed users that there will be "service instability in the short term" due to increased load. 

usage of our new features from devday is far outpacing our expectations.

we were planning to go live with GPTs for all subscribers monday but still haven't been able to. we are hoping to soon.

there will likely be service instability in the short term due to load. sorry :/

— Sam Altman (@sama) November 8, 2023

Meanwhile, OpenAI has been updating its official status page since 12:03 PST about a major outage. The company has now revealed that they are now dealing with "periodic outages due to an abnormal traffic pattern reflective of a DDoS attack."

FYI: We are dealing with periodic outages due to an abnormal traffic pattern reflective of a DDoS attack. We are continuing work to mitigate this.

Follow along: https://t.co/0jqsOtchMQ

The team is working very hard to stabilize right now!

— Logan.GPT (@OfficialLoganK) November 9, 2023

While most Benzinga's overnight team members have not faced any such trouble when accessing the chatbot, one person shared their troubles regarding the outage. 

It is pertinent to note in August ChatGPT was down for 42 minutes across its web and mobile services.  

Why It's Important: A DDoS or Distributed Denial-of-Service attack is a malicious attempt by cyber criminals in which they flood a server with fake internet traffic to prevent users from accessing online services and sites.  

At this point, it is uncertain whether the Altman-led company was actually facing a DDoS attack or if ChatGPT simply attracted so much traffic that the site got jammed. 

Open AI informed users that the outage had been resolved on Nov. 9, 2023, at 1:21 p.m. PST. The company said, “The incident has been resolved and status of our services have returned to normal.”

Photo via Shutterstock

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