Outages of ChatGPT and other OpenAI products last Thursday interrupted the workflows of some businesses and prompted some small-business leaders to rethink their reliance on the model.
The four-hour outage was caused by a new monitoring tool that led to a systems overload, according to a statement from OpenAI. The company said it has implemented new measures to prevent a similar problem from recurring.
This isn’t the first time that ChatGPT has experienced an outage this year: the platform suffered another four-hour outage in June.
What are the impacts of outages like this on small businesses?
For small businesses who use ChatGPT casually, without high levels of customisation or integration with key systems, outages like Thursday’s have minimal impact. ISB heard from a few small businesses who simply switched back to writing emails manually, or used another Large Language Model (LLM) like Gemini or Claude while ChatGPT was unavailable.
“As we use a couple of different types of AI, we were not affected by this outage,” said small-business owner Jo McClure, who runs the virtual assistance firm JM Virtual Business Services. “It does emphasise the importance of not being reliant on one platform.”
“We’ve started to put some processes in place to have team members train up on other platforms,” said David Jenyns, founder of Systemology.
Jenyns said his business uses HubSpot’s built-in AI feature, Breeze AI, which he noticed went down at the same time as ChatGPT.
“This makes me think that they’re using ChatGPT’s API,” he said. “That’s quite interesting – that other services become dependent on the ChatGPT API, so that when it goes down, a lot of things go down.”
Other small businesses experienced serious disruptions due to the incident. One was an Engage AI, which offers its customers an AI-powered LinkedIn sales tool. Founder Jason Tan told ISB that most of his start-up’s products rely on ChatGPT. When the systems went down on Thursday, almost all its customers lost access to their services.
“Our customer support team was overwhelmed by SME owners unable to use our product for their prospecting efforts,” said Tan. “It became an all-hands-on-deck situation, with even our engineers stepping in to assist and clarify how the outage impacted us. We’re now exploring diversification with LLMs from providers like Google and Claude to mitigate similar risks in the future.”
Can we expect further outages?
This isn’t the first time ChatGPT has had a several-hours-long outage, and it most likely won’t be the last.
“It is quite possible that we will see more outages in the future,” said AI specialist Mike Knapp. “Although these systems have become more reliable over time, they still operate within complex technical environments that can fail for a number of reasons. These might include sudden increases in demand that push infrastructure to its limits, unexpected security threats like DDoS attacks, or issues with the underlying cloud platforms that LLM providers rely on.”
How can small businesses avoid issues with LLM outages?
If you want to avoid inconvenience to your business, it’s best to diversify your use of LLM platforms, as Jason Tan’s team is now doing.
Another option, Knapp suggested, is using a locally-run language model as a backup – Llama 11B from Meta is an example.
“This might not offer the same level of performance, but it can help keep basic tasks moving during an outage,” he said.
AI coach Leanne Shelton, who works closely with small-business owners, recommended using Cassidy.AI as a slightly more secure platform.
“[Cassidy.AI] is a more secure platform as it reads your sharepoint and Google drives (with permission) rather than you having to upload content,” said the founder of HumanEdge AI. “Apart from that, you can select which LLM model you wish to work with. ChatGPT, Gemini or CoPilot.”
It’s tempting to rely on LLMs heavily when doing work, particularly if you’ve spent hours working on a custom GPT that knows your business’ operations inside out. But it’s also important to be able to work without an AI crutch if need be.
“One practical approach for businesses heavily relying on these tools is dedicating at least one day a week to operating without them,” said communications expert Jasmin Hyde. As a marketing professional, the owner of Hyde & Seek Communications has seen many in her industry grow reliant on text generation tools.
“As automation grows, uniquely human traits like creativity and intuition will only become more valuable. The businesses that thrive will be those that integrate AI strategically while preserving their human touch.”
