China’s DeepSeek AI chatbot experienced its longest recorded outage on Monday, lasting over seven hours, raising concerns about the reliability of rapidly scaling AI systems. The disruption affected both general users and developers relying on its API services, though the company did not disclose the cause. While previous outages had impacted developer services, this marked the first major extended disruption for public-facing users. The incident comes at a time when global dependence on AI tools is increasing, highlighting vulnerabilities in digital infrastructure and the potential risks of outages in critical technology systems.