Copilot, Bing, and ChatGPT suffered major outages and might have issues in the coming days

Copilot experienced a major outage recently on Microsoft Bing, and the Redmond-based tech giant released a statement saying the AI model is experiencing some issues.

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

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

When trying to access Copilot in Microsoft Edge, the following page popped up, and the AI was unresponsive for hours.

The issue affected Bing entirely, as some of its capabilities, such as Maps, were also down. Copilot was entirely unavailable and had been as such for almost 5 hours. ChatGPT and DuckGoGo were also affected by this outage. Users reported they were not able to search properly on Bing, so the engine’s searching capabilities were affected.

Ecosia, the green browser we have recently written about, was also affected by the issue, as it uses Bing as its main search engine.

The trees are silent. Some of you may not be able to get search results right now, but we will be back up and running soon!

— Ecosia (@ecosia) May 23, 2024

The Redmond-based tech giant said it was working to isolate the issue. Interestingly enough, the company’s service health platform said everything was ok.

Microsoft was still working to find the root of the issue, but the company said it was transitioning requests to alternative components to provide temporary solutions. Copilot was still not working, however.

While we isolate the root cause, we're transitioning requests to alternate service components to expedite service recovery. More information can be found in the admin center under CP795190.

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

Users were not happy with Microsoft. Many were left confused by the tweets released by the company, saying the tech giant is not transparent enough.

Cool. Locking info down to paying users. Now you have to pay to know why the software doesn’t work.

What does that even mean?

I would have expected the AI to fix itself. You mean it’s not omniscient? The horror!!!

Meanwhile, the platform was unresponsive all this time. Ultimately, Copilot alongside other platforms regained functionality, but the Redmond-based tech giant says on X (formerly known as Twitter) it was not able to identify the root of the problem, yet.

Our efforts to understand the root cause of the issue are ongoing. In tandem, we have applied various mitigations and are monitoring
their efficacy; however, some Copilot
functionalities remain affected. More information can be found in the admin center under CP795190.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) May 24, 2024

So, if you’re using Copilot, just know it might not be working properly in the next few days.

In development.