Baffling Microsoft ad shows Copilot incorrectly identifying Windows 11 setting (www.windowscentral.com)

Microsoft’s new social-media ad for Copilot on Windows 11 drew ridicule after the assistant failed to guide a user to the correct accessibility control. In the clip, a user asks Copilot to “make the text on my screen bigger.” Copilot highlights where to click but omits the next steps, only revealing the scaling option after being prompted again — and even suggests 150%, which the UI already had selected. The assistant never points the user to Windows’ dedicated “Text size” accessibility setting (which changes text alone without scaling the entire UI). Viewers called out the spot for demonstrating Copilot’s confusion rather than competence; Microsoft hasn’t publicly responded. The episode matters because it exposes core technical weaknesses in practical AI assistants: intent understanding, UI-state awareness, and reliable mapping from natural-language instructions to specific system settings. For Copilot to be a trustworthy OS-level agent, it needs to ground user intent to the correct control (distinguish “text size” vs. “display scaling”), read current system state (detect already-selected values), and present complete, actionable steps. The backlash also feeds broader skepticism about Microsoft’s “agentic OS” push and the growing annoyance with bundled AI features and bloat — a reminder that flawed demos can erode user trust and highlight the engineering work still required for robust, context-aware system assistants.