SAN FRANCISCO -- OpenAI is experiencing an outage Thursday, causing many users to error out when using ChatGPT or Sora.

The tech company says the outage is caused by an "upstream provider" issue. The outage began around 2 p.m. ET, according to DownDetector. Nearly 15,000 people were reporting outages at that time.

Despite the number declining, thousands are still experiencing issues.

"Most of ChatGPT, the API, and Sora have been down for a couple of hours and we're sorry for the trouble this is causing," said OpenAI in a post to X, formerly known at Twitter. "We've identified the issue and have started recovery. We hope to be back ASAP."

Users can access Sora and ChatGPT but will not be able to request anything from the bots. Users who try will get an error message.

The outage has been ongoing for hours and no estimated time of repair has been released.

TechCrunch says this is the second multi-hour outage of the month, the first lasting six hours two weeks ago.