Source: Sharecast
According to DownDetector, the specialist website, outage reports spiked throughout the morning on Tuesday.
The official Microsoft 365 status account on X, formerly Twitter, confirmed mid-morning that it was investigating an issue in which UK users "may be unable to access Microsoft Copilot, or experience degraded functionality with some features".
It later confirmed an issue had been identified that "may affect any user within the United Kingdom, or Europe, attempting to access Copilot", following what appeared to be a spike in demand.
It said: "Indications from service monitoring telemetry suggest an unexpected increase in traffic has resulted in impact."
A separate issue affecting load balancing was later identified, which is also contributing to the overall impact".
Posting just before 1300 GMT, the account confirmed: "We’re making changes to our load balancing rules to provide relief.
"In parallel, we’re continuing to work on increasing capacity to meet demand."