Global outages hit Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo, ChatGPT Search and Copilot 

Bing Search and sites powered by Microsoft Corp.’s Bing have been experiencing outages worldwide today that began at about 3 a.m. EDT.

Searchers using Bing and other websites that rely on Bing Search, such as Copilot for the web, Copilot on Windows, OpenAI’s ChatGPT internet search, DuckDuckGo Inc’s private search will see errors. According to user reports compiled on Downdetector, outages are still ongoing and users have reported issues with the search engine in the United States as of 10 a.m. EDT.

Users attempting to access Bing’s front page are intermittently met with a blank page and cannot access the site – although sometimes it might bring up a search interface. Searches don’t always work and when they are attempted, users are admonished to check spelling or keywords.

We’re investigating an issue where users may be unable to access the Microsoft Copilot service. We’re working to isolate the cause of the issue. More information can be found in the admin center under CP795190.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) May 23, 2024

Both Microsoft Copilot for Web and the artificial intelligence experience Copilot in Windows 11 appear to be affected by the outages and cannot load. Hundreds of users have reported that Bing Create and Copilot Designer AI tool are also offline. Users receive an error telling them: “It’s not you, it’s us.”

Update: Microsoft commented that continuing efforts to mitigate the outage at 12:00 p.m. EDT have shown partial recovery for Copilot and other features. “We’re closely monitoring to determine if further actions are needed to resolve the issue,” the company said in a post on X.

Other services that use Bing’s application programming interface are also offline, such as ChatGPT internet search and DuckDuckGo. If a user attempts to use them they will return errors. DuckDuckGo will attempt a long load and return with an error message, “There was an error displaying the search results. Please try again.”

Announcement: We’re currently experiencing an issue with DuckDuckGo Search that might prevent you from getting results. Thanks for your patience while we get our ducks in a row…

— DuckDuckGo (@DuckDuckGo) May 23, 2024

The privacy-focused search engine confirmed earlier this morning that it knew that an issue was happening in a post X and was working towards a solution to the problem. “Thanks for your patience while we get our ducks in a row…,” the company wrote.

OpenAI’s server status page has been updated to note, “We are currently investigating the issue.” ChatGPT also displays a partial outage today.

Images: Microsoft, Downdetector