THE CRUNCH
From 9 December, Microsoft will turn on Anthropic's Claude models for UK Copilot tenants that have not had a setting chosen by their admins, giving those administrators a deadline to weigh whether processing in the US suits their compliance needs. Admins can switch the feature off, but doing nothing amounts to opting in.
In this arrangement, Anthropic works as a Microsoft subprocessor and handles the relevant data in the United States, per Microsoft's documentation. Claude is already switched on by default for most commercial cloud customers, with the exceptions notably covering the EU, the European Free Trade Association and the UK. UK tenants, however, fall outside Microsoft's EU Data Boundary, the data-residency arrangement launched at the start of 2023, which is why the default is being flipped for Britain.
Admins therefore have until 9 December to check whether US processing satisfies their organisation's rules on data handling and adjust the setting if it does not. Microsoft is also doing away with the option that limited Claude to Microsoft 365, saying the change shows it is committed to letting customers pick between leading AI models while keeping enterprise-grade security and compliance.