- Microsoft has a new ad for the holiday and holiday season on YouTube
- Promotes ‘Hey Copilot’ voice input and AI functionality in Windows 11
- There has been some negative reaction to the advert and there is a risk of viewers having unrealistic expectations of Copilot.
Windows 11 has a holiday ad (it’s December in case you haven’t noticed) featuring Copilot and, surprise, surprise, it’s causing some controversy.
Windows Latest highlighted Microsoft’s new ad for the AI assistant, which is part of the ‘meet the computer you can talk to’ promotional clip series (with background music by A-punk for Vampire Weekend).
It involves showing people using the activation message ‘Hey Copilot’ (hence the song, which includes lots of ‘heys’) and then verbally interacting with the desktop assistant to perform tasks of one kind or another.
This is all part of a new push to push not just AI, but also voice input as the next big thing in terms of interacting with your PC (mouse and keyboard aside, at least to some extent).
In this new announcement, we see several familiar settings and requests including syncing Christmas lights with music using Windows 11 PC, discover instructions, and check regulations for placing outdoor decorations (an inflatable reindeer). There’s a touch of humor here, and even a cameo of Santa receiving a toy assembly report.
You can watch it below (and here’s a previous ad for this series from last month, if you want a broader perspective).
Look
Analysis: high expectations
As you can probably guess, given all the controversy that has arisen lately around the topic of AI in Windows 11 in general, this announcement has not been well received in some quarters. (Although as Windows Latest makes clear, not all reactions have been negative.)
Some of the comments on Microsoft’s YouTube clip are, shall we say, rather scathing suggestions of possible Copilot voice commands (which are getting the nod). Like ‘Hey Copilot, how can I uninstall you?’ or ‘Hello Copilot: how can I install Linux?’ or ‘switch to Windows 10’ and, well, you get the idea.
I feel like that’s a little unfair to Microsoft, though completely predictable simply because, to quote an oft-cited sentiment on social media as of late, people are tired of AI being shoved down their throats with Windows 11. And Microsoft just ramped up all those AI marketing efforts, part of which is this new “PC you can talk to” campaign.
To me, voice input is a pretty interesting technology; I have used it for a long time on Windows; In fact, long before Windows 11 came out. I’m glad to see voice commands being integrated more deeply into the operating system (which has been happening for a while), and I think that’s all a good thing that’s certainly helpful for some basic elements of functionality.
Where it becomes more problematic is in some of the complexities of tying it all together with AI. First of all, because we are currently going through a kind of rebellion against AI by a good part of Windows 11 users (and those who resist Windows 10, in fact, as another reason not to upgrade). So anything AI related is attracting a lot of heat right now.
And while voice input and indeed Copilot Vision, which can guide you through queries based on the contents of your screen and even offer guided help with some apps, are useful, there’s an issue here in managing expectations.
This latest ad has a big problem for me, which is the opening scene where Copilot is asked to sync the Christmas lights to the beat of the music, and in a flash, that task is accomplished. Can Copilot really do this? No, you can’t: there’s no functionality to link smart home devices, like lights, to your Windows 11 PC, and Copilot will somehow guide you on how to figure this out (let alone do it for you).
So there’s an expectation bubble inflating here, ready to burst if someone buys a Copilot+ PC based on this ad and sets out to accomplish some kind of similar task. Now, Copilot Vision can offer useful guidance, as noted, but it’s still imperfect and quite limited, so the reality of the feature is going to disappoint.
I don’t think it’s a good start to the less tech-savvy buyer’s experience with their new AI PC, and Microsoft needs to be careful about that. You can argue that it’s illustrative of where Microsoft intends to go with Copilot, which is presumably the intent of this element of the announcement, which is a conceptual snapshot of what the future of this feature may hold, but that doesn’t convince me. I’m not going to announce a flying car and then reveal that hover jets are coming at some point; but no, you still can’t take to the skies.
Microsoft is strengthening Copilot’s part too much here and creating more divisions around AI, neither of which seems like a sensible move.
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