Amazon Web Services (AWS) is currently experiencing a significant outage that began on Monday, affecting various online services across the globe. This disruption has impacted numerous platforms, including AI applications, e-commerce sites, popular websites, and online games.
Reports indicate that access to Amazon“s virtual assistant, Alexa, as well as the social media application Snapchat and the online game Fortnite, has been compromised. Other services such as the AI platform ChatGPT, the Epic Games Store, and Epic Online Services are also facing outages.
According to AWS, the company is investigating increased error rates and latency issues specifically in the US-EAST-1 Region, confirming that multiple services are affected by these operational challenges. Users took to social media, particularly Reddit, to share their experiences, noting that Alexa is currently unresponsive and unable to fulfill requests.
Additionally, cloud-hosted platforms reliant on AWS, including Perplexity, Airtable, and Canva, have also reported difficulties, as well as the McDonald”s mobile application. The precise cause of the outage has yet to be confirmed, and it remains unclear when normal service will resume.
In a message shared on the social media platform X, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas stated, “Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We”re working on resolving it.”
The AWS dashboard first indicated issues affecting the US-EAST-1 Region at 3:11 AM Eastern Time (ET). Following this, Amazon announced, “We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand the root cause. We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.”
By 5:27 AM ET, the company reported “significant signs of recovery,” noting that “most requests should now be succeeding,” while they continue to manage a backlog of queued requests.
This is not the first time AWS has experienced outages in the US-EAST-1 region, with previous incidents occurring in 2020, 2021, and 2023, leading to widespread disruptions for various applications.
