Microsoft’s Holiday Copilot Ad: Promises Unfulfilled?
▼ Summary
– Microsoft released a holiday-themed ad showing actors using Copilot AI for tasks like syncing lights and scaling recipes, but the reviewer tested these claims.
– The ad uses fictional elements like a fake smart home company and an AI-generated image, which Microsoft confirmed were created for the advertisement.
– When tested, Copilot provided inaccurate or hallucinated guidance, such as inventing buttons and misidentifying objects in assembly instructions.
– Copilot’s cursor highlight feature was slow and unreliable, often failing to mark items on screen or lingering after moving on.
– The reviewer concludes the ad sells a fantasy, comparing belief in Copilot’s advertised capabilities to believing in Santa Claus.
Microsoft’s festive holiday commercial paints a vivid picture of AI seamlessly integrating into our seasonal routines, promising a helpful digital companion for everything from decorating to cooking. Yet, a hands-on test of the advertised scenarios reveals a significant gap between the marketing fantasy and the current, often frustrating, reality of using Copilot for these specific tasks.
The advertisement opens with a homeowner asking, “Show me how to sync my holiday lights to my music.” The spot conveniently shows a user navigating a website called Relecloud. This isn’t a real smart home platform; it’s a fictional company Microsoft uses in demonstrations. While the company states the Copilot responses in the ad are genuine but edited for time, the use of a fake service sets an immediate tone of artificiality.
When tested with both a screenshot from the ad and the actual Philips Hue Sync app, Copilot’s performance was unreliable. It attempted to guide by highlighting areas on the screen with a cursor, but this feature was slow and frequently inaccurate. The AI would claim to highlight buttons that didn’t exist, invent an “Apply” button that was merely a color preset, and generally provide confusing, unhelpful instructions that failed to accomplish the task.
Other prompts from the commercial proved equally troublesome. When asked for help with assembly instructions using an Ikea Kallax shelf manual, Copilot repeatedly misidentified parts, calling dowels “screws” or “nails.” It also confused page numbers with step numbers, creating more chaos than clarity for anyone trying to follow along.
The request to “Convert this recipe on my screen so it feeds 12” (or 14, as corrected by an actor) also fell short. Presenting a recipe from a cooking website, Copilot correctly noted the needed multiplier but then failed to complete the calculations. It misinterpreted simple “2x” and “3x” scaling buttons as interactive controls for inputting a custom number. When directly asked to calculate and list the new ingredient amounts, it agreed and then produced nothing.
In the ad’s final example, a homeowner asks Copilot to review HOA guidelines concerning a large inflatable reindeer. Microsoft confirmed the document and image were created for the commercial. When given that same screenshot, Copilot could identify the relevant rule about property lines but offered only vague, non-committal analysis on whether the decoration was in violation, ultimately leaving the decision to the user.
Perhaps the most telling moment is the ad’s cameo, where Santa Claus himself asks Copilot why toy production is lagging. The AI blames the elves’ hot cocoa consumption. This whimsical, clearly fictional exchange feels like an unintentional metaphor. The campaign sells a dream of effortless AI assistance, but believing Copilot can currently perform these complex, contextual tasks as shown is, much like believing in the jolly old elf, a pleasant holiday fantasy not yet grounded in reality.
(Source: The Verge)
