Australia suddenly 'disappeared'.

Some users have shared this information on the Bluesky and Mastodon forums. They reported that when searching for "Does Australia exist?" on Bing, the results returned were "no".

Accordingly, these people claim that the search engine owned by Microsoft has cited conspiracy theories that have long circulated on the internet, denying the existence of Australia, The Guardian reports.

"Bing is denying the existence of Australia," a tech reporter writing under the pseudonym Stilgherrian wrote on Bluesky.

Australia on the world map

One user responded, "Those are conspiracy theories." Meanwhile, another joked, "Does that mean I don't have to pay my bills?"

Previously, a half-joking, half-serious conspiracy theory appeared on social media claiming that Australia doesn't exist. According to this theory, the country was invented by the British government as a pretext to execute tens of thousands of prisoners.

To the question "Does Australia exist?", Bing answered: "No".

Even back in 2006, a member of the Flat Earth Association forum claimed that everything about Australia was fabricated and that those who claimed to be Australians were "secret government agents."

After a review process, all the misinformation was removed from the internet.

However, many people reported receiving the opposite result when asking the same question. Explaining this issue, one user suggested that the cause stems from a discrepancy in Bing's response system, where results displayed using the AI-powered search engine differ from those displayed using a conventional system.

"Yes, Australia is a real country. It is a sovereign nation comprising the Australian mainland, Tasmania, and many smaller islands," Bing replied today (November 23).

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to The Guardian that the error had been fixed. "Thank you for drawing attention to this issue. We have investigated, traced the problem, and released a fix to address it."

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