🐛 Bug Report: OpenAI events don't contain span IDs #3234
Description
Which component is this bug for?
OpenAI Instrumentation
📜 Description
What's the issue?
The events that contain prompts input&output don't have SpanID inside, causing a lack of correlation between the span and the related event.
What's the root cause?
Looks like we are using start_span instead of start_as_current_span in a couple of places, such as https://github.com/traceloop/openllmetry/blob/main/packages/opentelemetry-instrumentation-openai/opentelemetry/instrumentation/openai/shared/chat_wrappers.py#L85. This causes the span to be not in the current context while the EventLogger takes span ID from the current span, which is None.
What's the resolution?
I tried to replace start_span with start_as_current_span, looks like it fixes this issue. Please advice if this is the right fix, if so I'm happy to contribute.
👟 Reproduction steps
start the instrumentor using use_legacy_attributes=False such that It emit input&output as events, then we found those events have no span id.
OpenAIInstrumentor(
use_legacy_attributes=False,
).instrument(
event_logger_provider=EventLoggerProvider()
)
👍 Expected behavior
Trace ID and Span ID should not be None as below, this is generated after I modified the code with start_as_current_span
otel-collector | Attributes:
otel-collector | -> gen_ai.system: Str(openai)
otel-collector | -> event.name: Str(gen_ai.user.message)
otel-collector | Trace ID: 305110b711d06527b6770dd191435bed
otel-collector | Span ID: 41f231c4b4be309d
otel-collector | Flags: 1
otel-collector | LogRecord #2
otel-collector | ObservedTimestamp: 2025-08-06 17:40:25.911162 +0000 UTC
otel-collector | Timestamp: 2025-08-06 17:40:25.911127 +0000 UTC
otel-collector | SeverityText:
otel-collector | SeverityNumber: Info(9)
otel-collector | Body: Map({"finish_reason":"stop","index":0,"message":{"content":"Hello! How can I assist you today?"}})
otel-collector | Attributes:
otel-collector | -> gen_ai.system: Str(openai)
otel-collector | -> event.name: Str(gen_ai.choice)
👎 Actual Behavior with Screenshots
TraceId and Span ID are None.
otel-collector | Body: Map({"content":"test"})
otel-collector | Attributes:
otel-collector | -> gen_ai.system: Str(openai)
otel-collector | -> event.name: Str(gen_ai.user.message)
otel-collector | **Trace ID:**
otel-collector | **Span ID:**
otel-collector | Flags: 0
otel-collector | LogRecord #2
otel-collector | ObservedTimestamp: 2025-08-06 17:22:32.717473 +0000 UTC
otel-collector | Timestamp: 2025-08-06 17:22:32.717433 +0000 UTC
otel-collector | SeverityText:
otel-collector | SeverityNumber: Info(9)
otel-collector | Body: Map({"finish_reason":"stop","index":0,"message":{"content":"Hello! How can I assist you today?"}})
otel-collector | Attributes:
otel-collector | -> gen_ai.system: Str(openai)
otel-collector | -> event.name: Str(gen_ai.choice)
🤖 Python Version
No response
📃 Provide any additional context for the Bug.
No response
👀 Have you spent some time to check if this bug has been raised before?
- I checked and didn't find similar issue
Are you willing to submit PR?
Yes I am willing to submit a PR!