OpenAI and ChatGPT logos are seen in this illustration taken, February 3, 2023. (Reuters-Yonhap)

Microsoft-backed OpenAI said on Friday night it is facing an issue that has resulted in its popular chatbot ChatGPT being unavailable.

The company said in a statement on its website that it was investigating the issue and working to restore functionality as soon as possible.

Over 19,403 users had been impacted by the outage as of 7:13 p.m. ET, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Reuters)