Thousands of users across the United Kingdom reported sudden access failures on Microsoft Copilot today, with the AI assistant inside Microsoft 365 showing degraded performance, error messages and missing features. Microsoft has confirmed the disruption and says engineers are actively investigating.
By Swikblog News Desk | Published: December 9, 2025 | London, United Kingdom
A sudden Microsoft Copilot outage in the UK has left thousands of users unable to access one of the company’s most widely adopted AI tools. Reports began appearing this afternoon that Copilot features inside Microsoft 365 apps—including Word, Excel, Teams and Outlook—were failing to load or returning degraded results.
The problem became clear after Microsoft’s own service account, Microsoft 365 Status, issued an alert confirming that UK users may experience degraded functionality or full access failures.
“We’re investigating an issue in which users in the United Kingdom may be unable to access Microsoft Copilot, or experience degraded functionality with some features.”
What’s Impacted?
According to early reports, affected users are seeing:
- Copilot not loading inside Microsoft 365 apps
- Slow or incomplete responses from the AI system
- Missing features such as summarization and document drafting
- Teams-based Copilot prompts failing to execute
This disruption follows a period of heavy Copilot usage as businesses increasingly shift routine workflows into AI-assisted environments. Some analysts suggest the outage may relate to a backend service update, although Microsoft has not confirmed the root cause.
Microsoft: Engineers Are Investigating
Microsoft has opened an incident ticket under ID CP1193544 in the Microsoft Admin Center. The company says engineers are “actively investigating the degradation” and rolling out mitigations.
Users attempting to rely on Copilot for meetings, email drafting and productivity automation faced widespread interruptions throughout the day. Businesses relying on Copilot for customer communication workflows have also reported delays.
How Long Will Copilot Be Down?
Microsoft has not provided an estimated time to resolution. Historically, outages of this type last between 30 minutes and several hours, depending on the affected infrastructure layer.
Swikblog will keep this page updated as Microsoft releases more information. Verified source: CyberSecurityNews
What Users Should Do Right Now
- Check the Microsoft 365 Service Status page
- Monitor Microsoft 365 Admin Center (ID CP1193544)
- Use offline versions of Word/Excel while Copilot is unavailable
- Re-attempt AI prompts periodically as features may return gradually
