If you have been experiencing issues using Microsoft"s Bing search service this morning, you are definitely not alone. The Downdetctor site shows that people have been reporting issues with Bing since about 1:30 am Eastern time this morning,
The site shows that the peak of the Bing outage reports peaked at about 3 am Eastern time this morning. However, the outages reports have persisted at a high level for a number of hours and have started to go up again as of this writing.
TechCrunch reports that the outages are not just affecting Bing, but services that are using its API. That includes the Copilot generative AI assistant service. The Microsoft 365 Status X account posted word at 4:46 am Eastern time that Copilot was down for some, adding, "We"re working to isolate the cause of the issue.
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
A follow up message posted more recently at 7:38 am Eastern time stated that Microsoft is "transitioning requests to alternate service components to expedite service recovery" for Copilot while it tries to find what is causing the issue.
The search engine DucDuckGo, which partially uses Microsoft"s Bing API, has also posted word of outages for its search via its X account as well.
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
We will post updates on this continuing issues when they come in, and also post if Microsoft offers an explanation for these problems.