The troubles surrounding the launch of GTA Online have been well documented, and another update has come via Rockstar's Newswire service.
The latest post states: "If you have previously created a character but see an empty character selection screen when entering GTA Online, please back out to GTAV Story Mode and try re-entering GTA Online through the pause menu (repeat or wait until Rockstar cloud servers are back up). Do not create a new character in the empty slot where your character should be."
Before going on to say: "If you receive the message 'The Rockstar Cloud Servers Are Unavailable', please return to GTAV Story Mode and follow the steps above. Please do not press "Retry" on the message and do not proceed online with saving disabled, as this may lead to overwriting your existing character." Sound advice if you don't want to lose all your hard-earned progress.