Search capabilities for ChatGPT, Copilot, DuckDuckGo, and other platforms stopped working on Thursday morning due to a Microsoft outage.
The issues — which began around 3AM ET — appear to be linked to Bing’s API and any service that relies upon it. While Microsoft’s own web search engine, Bing, was also seemingly affected, according to TechCrunch, it came back online eventually.
By 11AM ET, OpenAI said the issue was resolved, with a note that “Between around 10:10 PM PT yesterday and 6:50 AM PT today, we experienced a partial outage affecting ChatGPT’s web-browsing capabilities due to Bing being unavailable.”
DuckDuckGo posted that “we’re coming back up” at around 10:30AM ET, and so did Ecosia, which is “the search engine that plants trees.” Just after noon, Microsoft’s 365 Status account on X posted a note saying, “We’re broadening our mitigation efforts following signs of partial recovery for http://copilot.microsoft.com and other features.”
Other search engines like DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, which rely on Bing’s API, were unable to load search results during the outage. Microsoft’s Copilot also experienced similar issues, displaying a loading loop that prevented users from accessing the service. ChatGPT, which allows Plus subscribers to perform web searches, displayed an error message when users attempted to make a search inquiry.
Microsoft has acknowledged the loading issues with its Copilot service, saying it’s “working to isolate the cause of the issue.” Meanwhile, Microsoft’s service health platform doesn’t flag any other service outages currently. OpenAI and Ecosia have confirmed that they are experiencing issues with their platform’s search features, and OpenAI says it’s also investigating the issue.
Update, May 23rd: Updated post to note services that have been restored.
