Microsoft Made Another Copilot Ad Where Nothing Actually Works (theverge.com)
- Reference: 0180424673
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/12/19/1932210/microsoft-made-another-copilot-ad-where-nothing-actually-works
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/report/847056/microsoft-copilot-ai-vision-pc-assistant-christmas-holiday-ad
The smart home interface shown in the ad belongs to "Relecloud," a fictional company Microsoft uses in internal case studies. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that both the HOA document and the inflatable reindeer photo were fabricated for the advertisement. The ad closes with Santa Claus asking Copilot why toy production is behind schedule.
Further reading : [3]Talking To Windows' Copilot AI Makes a Computer Feel Incompetent .
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9niCxTZ-Dk
[2] https://www.theverge.com/report/847056/microsoft-copilot-ai-vision-pc-assistant-christmas-holiday-ad
[3] https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/11/18/1932202/talking-to-windows-copilot-ai-makes-a-computer-feel-incompetent
Same old (Score:2)
Where marketing doesn't understand reality.
Re: (Score:2)
That's been a problem in tech since the beginning. Take a look at the PC ads from the 1980's... They always have some old white bossman with the keyboard in their lap and another happy smiling person standing behind the computer (?!?) looking at the screen from a 90 degree angle. Nobody actually types that way, and the other person could never actually see the screen from where they're sitting.
A new generation (Score:2)
It's beautiful to see a whole new generation realizing that Microsoft Works is an oxymoron.
That recipe complaint is bullshit. (Score:2)
Of course AI can scale a recipe, you just need to not be a complete retard and give it a specific prompt like: "scale this recipe for 6 to 14 people".
And don't tell it to "spell it out for you in a document", because I don't even know what you're asking for there. You get markdown and that's fine.
I feel like they knew how to get it to do what they wanted, they were just being cunty about it.
Re: (Score:3)
It's actually bad at this sort of thing. You can ask an LLM to write a 5 paragraph essay about the Gettysburg Address and to give you the program code to perform a word count and it will give you responses that are experts would agree are correct or otherwise good. However the same AI that delivered each if asked to count the number of words in the five paragraph essay it generated will be wrong. The current AIs posses that kind of advanced technology giving the appearance of magic, but it's just a very cle
Re: (Score:2)
I'm always willing to accept that I might be wrong, so I found a recipe for 6 and asked Gemini to convert it to feed 14 people.
It completely nailed it just like I knew it would.
I can't explain why other people seem to have problems though. Maybe you're bad at prompting or using very old models.
All about selling and greed (Score:2)
Nothing about actually having a positive contribution in any way. Good old crappy Microsoft.
Microsoft can't shake the Clippy reputation (Score:2)
Clippy, Bob,Cortana, Ask Encarta, "Google it on Bing", Microsoft just isn't good at actually helping things. I'm really hoping that SteamOS finally makes deals with anti cheat companies and other proprietary software vendors and steal Microsoft's only reason to still exist. Microsoft has already discontinued Windows phone, Windows embedded has been mostly replaced with Android and Linux and web tech is all docker and Kubernetes now so the server os is a commodity. Windows 11 is a prison, and many people say
Got to give them credit (Score:2)
Hey, credit where it's due. At least they didn't use AI to make the ad.
Do they show it in the UK? (Score:2)
In the US you can say pretty much anything in an ad. I thought the UK required ad's to be factual. Well except I think the UK allows the same level of political lies the US allows in advertising.
Re: Do they show it in the UK? (Score:2)
Citation needed. I'm the meantime, Copilot gave me this:
[1]https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu]
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/54#
"Microsoft" and where Nothing Actually Works (Score:2)
Hey! it is Microsoft so nothing to see here but what one would expect.
The Verge (Score:2)
This is good reporting.
Keep it up.
Santa, toy production is behind schedule.. (Score:2)
...because you fired all of the elves after we told you that AI could do the work more efficiently.
(I was in a Microsoft presentation earlier today in which they were demonstrating how to use AI for "vibe programming". They spent an hour trying to get a Rails-based "Hello World" app running. At the end of the hour, it still wasn't working. Even in their pre-arranged demonstrations to customers, they can't get this crap working.)
Santa's probably using Copilot (Score:3)
> The ad closes with Santa Claus asking Copilot why toy production is behind schedule.
The Verge's analysis makes a good case for why Santa's behind schedule: he's relying on Copilot.
They're really trying to force things to happen (Score:2)
Our IT group keeps some records in Excel - so while I'm not crazy about using it, occasionally I do so. Anyway... a couple days ago I opened Excel (the desktop education version, FWIW) to make a quick edit to one of the files - and got hit in the face with an ad. "TALK TO COPILOT IN EXCEL", it said.
Why the F*** does Microsoft think I would want to talk to CoPilot about our damn spreadsheet?
Damnit Slashdot (Score:2)
I have uBlock Origin installed. I don't have any TV (broadcast, cable, etc..). Damnit Slashdot, stop telling me about ads. I don't care. I already know 100% are, and always have been, bullshit. I've been ad free since the mid 90s. Life is good. :-)
Copilot is GPT-5 (Score:3)
Always nice to bash Microsoft, but Copilot runs on gpt-5. Isn't OpenAI to blame?
Re: (Score:2)
Nowhere do I see OpenAI forcing Microsoft to make a *cough* misleading ad featuring OpenAI's defective product.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Because Altman already has Nadella by the short ones.
Microsoft has market cap of something like 3.5T
Microsoft got talked into something like a 30% stake in OpenAI that is worth about 140B.
All and all something in the area of 3-4% of Microsoft's value is the belief OpenAI is worth what its valued at and continues to be invest-able. If OpenAI were to implode, it will show up on Microsoft's balance sheet enough the board might actually start looking for a new CEO..
Re: (Score:2)
> Microsoft got talked into...
> If OpenAI were to implode...
These are only yet more things that are Microsoft's fault.
False advertising is not the solution.
Re: (Score:2)
Did OpenAI do the false advertising? If not, then they're not to blame.
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft made the product selection. Of course they are to blame.
Re: (Score:3)
To be fair, they probably asked Copilot to create the ad for them.
Re: (Score:2)
Honesty in advertising? Well, sort of indirectly. That must be a first for Microsoft.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No. While it's true that historically Microsoft has excelled in flooding the world with both flawed products and deceptive advertising, the problem here is just the deceptive advertising.
My refrigerator can't write a recipe either, but that's ok because the manufacturer didn't claim that it could when they sold it to me.
Microsoft continues with their core competency, the one that made them the most valuable company in the world: exploiting a legal system that doesn't keep up with technology fast enough to