Microsoft Examines Copilot Outage in Europe — Businesses Face Sudden Workflow Chaos

Microsoft's AI-powered digital assistant, Copilot, reportedly became inaccessible for users in the United Kingdom and Europe on 9 December 2025.

In a report by BleepingComputer, Microsoft acknowledged the problem, stating that it was caused by a 'capacity scaling issue' and that they are already looking into it. Microsoft addressed the public on X, saying, '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.'

The report also includes the outage, under the incident code CP1193544, which rendered users unable to access copilot.cloud.microsoft, MS Copilot integrations for MS 365, among others. Reports note users were getting a similar error message that read, 'Sorry, I wasn't able to respond to that. Is there something else I can help with?'

The Culprit: Traffic Surge

The high demand likely caused the system to collapse, and Microsoft continued to investigate the issue to determine the necessary course of action.

A statement by Microsoft on X 9 December 2025 states, 'We've identified an issue impacting service autoscaling to meet demand. We're manually scaling capacity to improve service availability, and we're monitoring this closely to ensure the expected outcome is achieved. For more information, please see CP1193544 in the admin centre.'

The outage continued until early morning in the UK, with public trackers such as DownDetector still showing a few reports of Microsoft Copilot outages.

Outage Aftermath

The outage particularly affected Microsoft's stock (NASDAQ:MSFT), which fell during the Copilot mishap. In an article by TipRanks, Microsoft's shares dipped slightly on Tuesday following the outage, primarily in Europe.

Microsoft's ongoing efforts to mitigate the issue, which caused degraded performance, enabled them to identify a policy change disrupting the distribution of traffic across Europe.

In another statement on X, Microsoft states, 'We've identified a recent policy change that impacted service traffic balancing. We've reverted this change in one of the affected EU environments and have observed a significant improvement in overall service health. For more information, please see CP1193544 in the admin centre.'

The tech giant finally confirmed the issue had been resolved on Wednesday, 10 December, by reverting the policy change.

Earlier this month, we noted a service disruption with the Microsoft Defender portal, as shared by BleepingComputer. Microsoft announced that the issue caused portal problems, particularly with threat-hunting alerts. The service alert DZ1191468 was resolved promptly.

Looking Ahead

By promptly tackling issues and quickly identifying their origins, Microsoft can mitigate service disruptions and restore functionality as soon as possible. This also allows them to minimise any long-term damage.

In future, these incidents remind us to have contingency plans in place, particularly when relying on or integrating digital assistants into our workflows, to prevent these mishaps from catching us off guard.

In a world where AI tools have become unacceptable, especially in the workplace, Microsoft's response to outages has demonstrated its proactive approach and management that strengthen trust among its users, not only in the UK or Europe but worldwide.

For everyday users, the outage reminds us that even the most advanced tools are not immune to disruptions. The productivity we can gain from the convenience these tools bring is only commensurate with our preparedness to handle sudden service interruptions. Relying heavily on these tools is therefore always contraindicated.