# AssemblyAI: Major incident: Slam-1 requests not completing successfully

**Summary:** AssemblyAI reported a major outage: all transcription requests using Slam-1 failed; Universal was unaffected and offered as a workaround. The incident started at 2025-08-05 16:05 UTC and resolved at 2025-08-05 23:15 UTC (7 h 9 min), with successful requests observed again by 16:53 UTC. AssemblyAI made improvements to help Slam-1 scale more effectively. _(machine-written, sol)_
- Kind: Major incident · Label: outage (model (Jev))
- Changed: 2025-08-05 16:05 UTC · Detected: 2026-10-17 18:22 UTC
- [Source: https://stspg.io/8tvz9yml6h0b](https://stspg.io/8tvz9yml6h0b)
- [Company: AssemblyAI](https://rewindex.com/company/assemblyai.md)
- Versions: before (none: first archived) → after incident\_version:2/rz51jtsbvhcq@2d9061f396aa
- Change 1 of 1 for this incident

## What changed

**1. Added: Title**

```diff
+ Slam-1 requests not completing successfully
```

**2. Added: Impact**

```diff
+ major
```

**3. Added: Status**

```diff
+ resolved
```

**4. Added: Start time**

```diff
+ 2025-08-05 16:05 UTC
```

**5. Added: Resolved time**

```diff
+ 2025-08-05 23:15 UTC
```

**6. Added: Affected components**

```diff
+ APIs - Asynchronous API, Asynchronous API
```

**7. Added: Update** (investigating) · 2025-08-05 16:05 UTC

```diff
+ We are currently investigating an issue with Slam-1 that is preventing the successful completion of transcription requests using the model. We will share additional information as it becomes available. Please note this issue is only affecting requests using Slam-1 as the ʹspeech_modelʹ. Universal is unaffected.
```

**8. Added: Update** (investigating) · 2025-08-05 16:14 UTC

```diff
+ We are continuing to investigate the issues affecting Slam-1. Currently, all requests using Slam-1 as the ʹspeech_modelʹ are failing with a "Server error, developers have been alerted" error. Our team is working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. Note: This issue is only affecting requests using Slam-1 as the ʹspeech_modelʹ. Changing the ʹspeech_modelʹ to Universal will allow requests to complete successfully. See this section of our documentation for more information on specifying a speech model: https://www.assemblyai.com/docs/speech-to-text/pre-recorded-audio/select-the-speech-model
```

**9. Added: Update** (monitoring) · 2025-08-05 16:23 UTC

```diff
+ We have resolved the issue that was affecting Slam-1 and are now seeing requests being processed successfully. We will continue to monitor traffic to ensure good performance, but everything is working as expected at the moment.
```

**10. Added: Update** (identified) · 2025-08-05 16:42 UTC

```diff
+ We are once again experiencing issues with Slam-1 where requests are failing with a "Server error, developers have been alerted" error. Note: This issue is only affecting requests using Slam-1 as the ʹspeech_modelʹ. Changing the ʹspeech_modelʹ to Universal will allow requests to complete successfully. See this section of our documentation for more information on specifying a speech model: https://www.assemblyai.com/docs/speech-to-text/pre-recorded-audio/select-the-speech-model
```

**11. Added: Update** (identified) · 2025-08-05 16:53 UTC

```diff
+ We are seeing Slam-1 requests complete successfully once again, but we are still working to fully resolve the root cause of this issue.
```

**12. Added: Update** (identified) · 2025-08-05 17:16 UTC

```diff
+ We are still seeing good performance with the Slam model and requests completing as expected, but we are still working to fully resolve the root cause to prevent issues in the future.
```

**13. Added: Update** (monitoring) · 2025-08-05 19:38 UTC

```diff
+ We have continued to see good performance with no instances of increased errors over the last couple of hours ,but are continuing to monitor to ensure there are no further issues.
```

**14. Added: Update** (resolved) · 2025-08-05 23:15 UTC

```diff
+ We have continued to see good performance for the last ~6 hours so we are marking this issue as resolved. To prevent future issues, we have made some improvements to allow Slam-1 to scale more effectively.
```

## History of this incident

| When (UTC) | Change | Label |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 2025-08-05 16:05 UTC | Major incident: Slam-1 requests not completing successfully (this change) | outage |

All AssemblyAI changes: [timeline](https://rewindex.com/company/assemblyai/changes.md)
_Diff excerpts are shown on normalized text: dates, counters and tokens appear as ‹date›, ‹count›, ‹tok›; noise-only edits are hidden. Rewindex shows the changed passages, not a copy of the page._


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Canonical: https://rewindex.com/change/ib10527b89e94c7 · Markdown: https://rewindex.com/change/ib10527b89e94c7.md · JSON: https://rewindex.com/api/v1/changes/ib10527b89e94c7 · Generated 2026-10-18T02:55:41.441Z