Resolved incident
Timeout on transcriptions using speaker labels
AssemblyAI · Major · Started
- Duration
- 1h 11m
- Severity
- Major
- Status
- Postmortem
Summary
Major · Postmortem
**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.
Event timeline
How this incident unfolded, from the official status page.
Investigating
AssemblyAI
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.
Identified
AssemblyAI
The issue has been identified and a fix has been released.
Monitoring
AssemblyAI
A fix has been implemented and our API is slowly beginning to recover normal processing.
Monitoring
AssemblyAI
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.
Monitoring
AssemblyAI
Our API is continuing to recover and incoming transcriptions are returning to normal processing. We are continuing to monitor the situation.
Resolved
AssemblyAI
This incident has been resolved.
Postmortem
AssemblyAI
**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.