Microsoft is working on it again Another round of ads People are being shown talking to Copilot AI on their computers. This time it’s holiday themed, including a cameo from the big man in red. 30 second tv spot Asks if you’re “ready for the holidays” and asks the actor copilot in various festive home settings for some how-to help with everything from holiday lighting and cooking to oversized outdoor decorations.
Like the last time I tested CoPilot Vision and Voice modes, I made a list of all the prompts in Microsoft’s ad and I’m checking them twice. Or as many times as I can stomach before hitting the nog.
In new advertisementCopilot offers to help a homeowner make their smart home more festive when they prompt it, “Show me how to sync my holiday lights to my music.” User clicks through their cloud-connected smart lighting controls to a website called relaycloud As the copilot says, “Let’s go through this together.” The ad changes to the illumination of house lights to the tune of Vampire Weekend’s classic Christmas song “A-Punk”.
RelayCloud is not a well-known smart home company like Philips Hue or Govi. In fact, it’s not a real business at all. This is one of those fictitious companies that Microsoft uses published case studies (See also: Contoso). I think its use here points to simulating all these advertised CoPilot functions, but the Microsoft representative says that’s not the case. Nikki Trovinger, general manager of Windows Marketing, explains The Verge“All Copilot responses are actual responses that Copilot gave at one time to the scenarios shown and questions asked. In line with standard advertising practices, responses were shortened for brevity to correspond to the length of the creative space.”
I tried this test with CoPilot in two ways: one using a still image of the lighting interface from an ad, and the other with the Philips Hue Sync app. CoPilot made its best guess at where I should click in the image from the ad, highlighting the “Sync Mode” drop-down menu with its own onscreen cursor, but it struggled to get me much further. It would often tell me it highlighted something when it didn’t, and it would hallucinate a green “Apply” button that was actually the color preset for green light.
When I presented the fully configured app for my Philips Hue lights, CoPilot’s answers were just as confusing. It identified the Hue Sync app, and correctly told me to click the Music tab and the “Start Light Sync” button at first. But then it confused me with buttons that weren’t there, pointed me to entertainment areas I’d already set up, and kept telling me it highlighted things on my screen when it didn’t. Copilot’s cursor highlight feature is useful, but it usually only does it when you ask – and it’s very slow to respond. It often remains on your screen even after Copilot moves on to other advice.
Some other prompts in the ad remain unanswered, including “Help me understand these instructions” and “Transform this recipe on my screen so it feeds 12 people.”
“14!” Another actor, presumably his partner, intervenes.
In these cases we can’t see what’s on the screen, so for the sake of instructions, I took a shot of showing Copilot Ikea 2×4 klax shelf – A classic with assembly manual available online. The co-pilot continued to identify the dowels as screws or nails. And it often identifies page numbers as step numbers, making any attempt to follow along even more chaotic.
Preparing a recipe for a huge gathering is a common holiday practice in my Italian American family. I tried to show copilot A recipe for stuffed mushrooms sip and feastIt acknowledged that each ingredient would need to be multiplied by about 2,3 times to go from a serving size of six to 14, but it usually only did a few calculations before expecting me to do the rest or trying to move on to another topic by asking me a question, When he saw that there were options on the site to increase the recipe, he mistook the “2x” and “3x” buttons for plus and minus buttons that allowed me to dial in exactly 14 servings, and continued to insist that that’s what those buttons were for, They are not, Then, as a last ditch effort, I asked him to calculate each component and write it out for me in a document, The co-pilot told me it would happen, and then did nothing,
The last example from the ad has the homeowner with the smart lights asking, “Can you read the HOA guidelines and make sure I’m not breaking any rules?” On the screen is a made-up looking document titled “HOA Guidelines” and a picture of a giant inflatable reindeer in front of a house that is encroaching on neighboring property. The image also looks AI-generated; Microsoft’s Trovinger confirmed that “Both the reindeer yard decoration photo and the HOA guidelines document were created for advertising purposes and were based on references.”
The Co-Pilot ad tells the actor to “adjust the inflatable reindeer so it doesn’t go into the neighbor’s yard.” When I showed Copilot the ad document and a screenshot of the image, it could detect the line that “Large inflatables may not cross your property line.” But the copilot gave me only vague answers about whether the reindeer were very far away or not. It was believed that the deer It is possible Pushing boundaries, but often deferring to my judgment.
There is another hint in the advertisement. It’s funny old St. Nick asking Copilot why toy production is lagging. In the ad, the copilot says it’s because the elves are consuming too much hot cocoa. But maybe that’s because management insists on incorporating AI into its workflow.
I have to hand it to Microsoft’s marketing team for including this, which feels like an admission that the entire ad campaign is selling a fantasy. Believing that CoPilot can do what Microsoft says — or that any of these AI assistants can do — is like believing in Santa Claus.
