Changes / AssemblyAI / Timeout on transcriptions using speaker labels
AssemblyAI: Major incident: Timeout on transcriptions using speaker labels
Summary
AssemblyAI reported a major US Asynchronous API outage starting 2026-06-25 15:37 UTC (reported impact began 15:00 UTC), resolved at 2026-06-25 16:48 UTC; computed duration: 1 h 10 min. Speaker diarization failures caused timeouts for speaker-labeled files under 2 minutes, with backlog delays and timeouts affecting other requests; a fix was released and processing recovered.
Machine-written from the diff below (Sol; type: incident outage). Check the diff before relying on it.
What changed
Before: not present
After: Timeout on transcriptions using speaker labels
Before: not present
After: major
Before: not present
After: postmortem
Before: not present
After: 2026-06-25 15:37 UTC
Before: not present
After: 2026-06-25 16:48 UTC
Before: not present
After: APIs - Asynchronous API, Asynchronous API
Before: not present
After: We are currently investigating an issue with async transcriptions on the US endpoint that use speaker labels. This is resulting in timeouts for all transcriptions with speaker labels enabled for files under 2 minutes long. This began at 15:00 UTC.
Before: not present
After: The issue has been identified and a fix has been released.
Before: not present
After: A fix has been implemented and our API is slowly beginning to recover normal processing.
Before: not present
After: The root cause has been addressed and our system is slowly working through the transcript backlog, which is causing slower processing on our US async endpoint.
Before: not present
After: Our API is continuing to recover and incoming transcriptions are returning to normal processing. We are continuing to monitor the situation.
Before: not present
After: This incident has been resolved.
Before: not present
After: **What happened**
An issue related to our speaker diarization service caused certain requests to hang until they timed out. This lead to a backlog of requests to our async API creating a processing queue across our US transcription pipeline, which slowed and timed out transcription requests more broadly, including requests that were not using speaker diarization.
---
**When**
Impact ran from approximately 15:00 to 16:25 UTC on June 25, 2026 \(about 1 hour 25 minutes\). The most severe disruption was in the first 45 minutes \(15:00–15:45 UTC\); remaining delays and timeouts cleared shortly after. Full recovery was confirmed by ≈16:40 UTC.
---
**What services were affected**
On our US async API endpoint transcription requests during this window saw processing delays and timeouts.
Our EU async API endpoint was not affected and operated normally throughout.
First version of this incident archived by Rewindex. View the live incident.
History of this incident
| When (UTC) | Change | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Major incident: Timeout on transcriptions using speaker labels (this change) AssemblyAI reported a major US Asynchronous API outage starting 2026-06-25 15:37 UTC (reported impact began 15:00 UTC), resolved at 2026-06-25 16:48 UTC; computed duration: 1 h 10 min. Speaker diarization failures caused timeouts for speaker-labeled files under 2 minutes, with backlog delays and timeouts affecting other requests; a fix was released and processing recovered. | Major incident |
All AssemblyAI changes → · AssemblyAI profile · Markdown · JSON