Baffling Microsoft ad shows Copilot AI incorrectly identifying Windows 11 setting — then pretending it was working as intended

As Microsoft continues its crusade toward turning Windows 11 into an AI OS, the company has launched a video campaign on social media where popular YouTubers and influencers show off the latest Copilot for Windows 11 capabilities. But one video has users baffled as the ad seemingly showcases Copilot incorrectly telling the user what to click.

The video is about how Copilot can help users find settings on Windows 11. In the video, the user says "Hey Copilot, I want to make the text on my screen bigger." Copilot shows the user where to begin clicking but then fails to go all the way and tell the user the rest of the steps to actually change the size of text.

The user is then forced to ask "can you show me where to click next?" before Copilot highlights the scaling option and explains that adjusting this setting will change the size of text, apps, and other on-screen UI elements. The user then asks "what percentage should I click?" and Copilot tells the user to select 150%, which is already selected.

In the video, the user just ignores Copilot's suggestion and selects 200% to get their desired result. But even still, the user had asked how to change the size of text, not the UI. Windows has a built-in accessibility option that lets you change text size without adjusting UI scaling, so why didn't Copilot take the user to that setting instead? It's all very confusing.

As you can expect, people in the replies are baffled. "How much did you pay him to not notice the scaling value being already selected?" says one post on X. "Marketing is doing to their best with what they have to work with" says another. "He literally showed the AI was useless and chose a different option" says one quoted reply which has amassed over 100K views so far.

In fact, a majority of the responses to this video are skewing negative. People don't understand what Microsoft is trying to achieve with this ad campaign, as it basically does everything it can to show you why AI assistants aren't the be-all end-all and how they're still quite flawed and can get easily confused.

In recent months, Microsoft has been on record as saying the future of Windows is one that will see it become an agentic OS, which has seen huge backlash from users who are not interested in such a vision from Microsoft. A recent post about this from Windows president Pavan Davuluri was so negatively received that he had to disable replies.

People just want Windows to be a platform that gets out of the way and are becoming annoyed with all the enshittification and bloatware that needs to be turned off. Things like requiring a Microsoft Account and being bombarded to use Copilot and OneDrive are frustrating users, with many choosing to move to other platforms as constant updates change and break things.

It's fair to say that Microsoft's current vision for Windows isn't working, and people are unhappy with how the platform is evolving. The company needs to go back to the drawing board and focus on the things that people are asking for most, mainly an OS that respects your choices and isn't prone to constant bugs.

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