Microsoft reportedly confirmed that a bug in Microsoft 365 Copilot allowed the AI assistant to summarise confidential Outlook emails for several weeks. The issue affected Copilot Chat, which was introduced last year across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
According to reports, the flaw enabled Copilot to access and summarise emails stored in Sent Items and Drafts folders, including messages marked with confidential labels typically used to protect sensitive communication. The bug, identified as CW1226324, was first detected on January 21 and impacted the Copilot “work tab” chat feature.
The issue reportedly bypassed Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies, which organisations rely on to secure sensitive data. Microsoft acknowledged the problem, stating, “Users’ email messages with a confidential label applied are being incorrectly processed by Microsoft 365 Copilot chat”. The company added that the ‘work tab Chat’ feature was summarising such emails despite sensitivity labels and DLP policies being active.
Microsoft attributed the incident to an unspecified code error and said it began rolling out a fix in early February. The company also stated it is continuing to monitor the deployment and is contacting a subset of affected users to confirm that the correction is working as intended.
The company has not disclosed how many users were impacted by the bug. The development comes as Microsoft continues expanding AI capabilities across its productivity tools and recently introduced AI-powered shopping features for Copilot within its Edge browser.
The incident has renewed discussions around AI governance and data privacy, especially as organisations increasingly rely on AI assistants within enterprise workflows.
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