Earlier today, a major outage originating from the Microsoft Bing application programming interface (API) caused widespread disruption for users of popular search platforms and AI tools, such as Copilot, ChatGPT and others.
The problems began around 8:00 AM WAT (3:00 AM ET) today, leaving many looking out for alternative means to access information.
While the Microsoft web search engine, Bing, appears to have recovered and is now displaying results as normal, the outage continues to cause issues on services that rely on Bing’s API for functionality.
This includes search engines like DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, which are gradually able to load search results at all. Users attempting to utilize search functions were met with blank pages or error messages.
The impact also reached Microsoft’s AI tool, Copilot, which kept users stuck in a frustrating interface of loading screens, effectively preventing access to the service.
For those who subscribe to the paid “Plus” tier of ChatGPT, another popular AI tool, the situation is equally frustrating. Attempts to initiate web searches through ChatGPT were met with error messages, hindering their ability to leverage the platform’s search capabilities.
OpenAI, the developers of ChatGPT, acknowledged the issue and confirmed they are actively investigating the cause of the malfunction impacting their platform’s search function. Ecosia, another search engine affected by the outage, reiterated OpenAI’s statement, assuring users they are working to resolve the problem.
Microsoft has taken some responsibility for the disruption. In a statement regarding the loading issues affecting Copilot, the platform acknowledged the problem and advised users to visit their admin center for further updates under the code CP795190.
However, at the time of this report, Microsoft’s service health platform shows no other reported outages, suggesting the Bing API issue is the root cause of the widespread disruption.
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