Microsoft has once again stepped into the spotlight with a fresh wave of advertisements centered around its Copilot AI, this time dressing the entire campaign in the bright colors and warm sentimentality of the holiday season. The new series of commercials features cheerful, talkative users interacting with Copilot on their personal computers as they prepare for festive celebrations. The central thirty‑second television spot—spirited, highly produced, and unmistakably seasonal—poses the question, “Are you ready for the holidays?” The ad transports viewers into a sequence of cozy, festooned households where animated actors turn to Copilot for humorous yet relatable assistance, requesting a little, as the script puts it, “ho‑ho‑ho‑help” with their festive chores. These tasks range from setting up dazzling outdoor light displays and perfecting recipes for celebratory dinners to managing the often cumbersome details of oversized yard decorations.
Much like in previous experiments involving Copilot’s Vision and Voice Modes, the reviewer behind this analysis meticulously cataloged every example interaction included in Microsoft’s latest clip. In a tongue‑in‑cheek nod to holiday tradition, the process of documenting those prompts mirrors the act of checking a Christmas list twice—although the writer admits patience wears thin long before the bottom of the eggnog glass.
In this newest advertisement, one highlighted exchange shows Copilot guiding a homeowner who asks it to “show me how to sync my holiday lights to my music.” The viewer then sees the user navigating a digital interface belonging to a web service called Relecloud. As Copilot encouragingly replies, “Let’s walk through it together,” the camera quickly cuts to reveal the result: the home’s exterior lights flashing rhythmically in time to Vampire Weekend’s famously upbeat track “A‑Punk.” The transition is brisk and cinematic, a touch that implies seamless AI‑enabled convenience.
Yet, upon closer examination, Relecloud is not a household name in the smart‑home ecosystem, certainly not standing beside well-known brands such as Philips Hue or Govee. In fact, it is entirely fictional—a corporate construct born within Microsoft’s own portfolio of sample enterprises, akin to the equally mythical Contoso used for demonstration purposes in technical case studies. This creative liberty leads the reviewer to speculate that the ad’s supposed Copilot interactions might be staged rather than organically recorded from real prompt‑and‑response sessions. Microsoft, however, insists otherwise. According to Nicci Trovinger, the company’s general manager of Windows Marketing, every line uttered by Copilot was drawn from genuine interactions that occurred during testing. Trovinger explains that only minor editorial trimming was applied for pacing and clarity—standard practice in commercial production.
To evaluate these claims, the reviewer recreated the experiment personally. The first attempt used a still image of the Relecloud lighting interface extracted from the advertisement; the second used a legitimate setup involving the Philips Hue Sync application. In the simulated test with the screenshot, Copilot gamely attempted to infer the correct on‑screen actions, even producing a cursor highlight that allegedly pointed to a “Sync Mode” menu. However, this digital assistant faltered soon after, at times insisting it had highlighted sections that remained untouched, and even envisioning non‑existent interface elements such as an “Apply” button—actually a color preset for green light.
When confronted with the genuine Hue Sync app, Copilot’s reasoning improved slightly, initially identifying the interface and accurately directing the tester to open the Music tab and press the “Start light sync” control. Yet consistency proved elusive: in later steps, Copilot invented phantom buttons, referenced Entertainment Zones already configured, and once again claimed to highlight regions it never actually emphasized. While the cursor‑highlight capability does exist, the reviewer found it slow to respond, persisting on screen even when Copilot had moved on to another instruction.
Several other prompts featured in the television spot go unresolved within the ad’s brief runtime. These include the user requests “Help me figure out these instructions” and “Convert this recipe on my screen so it feeds 12”—to which another actor, presumably a partner, playfully corrects, “14!” Because the visuals fail to reveal what materials Copilot is supposedly analyzing, the reviewer substituted relevant examples. For the assembly instructions, an online manual for Ikea’s iconic 2×4 Kallax shelf served as a stand‑in. Copilot’s visual comprehension was far from flawless: it repeatedly misinterpreted dowels as screws or nails and confused page numbers with sequential steps, creating a chaotic and impractical guide for assembly.
The recipe‑scaling prompt resonated more personally for the reviewer, whose Italian‑American family traditions involve cooking for large gatherings. Using a popular stuffed‑mushroom recipe from Sip and Feast, the tester asked Copilot to expand the servings from six to fourteen. Copilot correctly deduced that quantities would need to be multiplied by approximately 2.3, yet it handled only a few calculations before abandoning the task or steering the conversation elsewhere. When it recognized the “2x” and “3x” buttons embedded on the recipe’s website, it misinterpreted them as literal plus‑minus toggles, insisting that they could fine‑tune serving numbers individually. They cannot. Even after being instructed to lay out each adjusted ingredient in a document, Copilot agreed but failed to deliver any tangible result.
The advertisement’s final home‑based scenario builds to a humorous crescendo. A homeowner equipped with extravagant smart‑lighting decor asks, “Can you read the HOA guidelines and make sure I’m not breaking any rules?” The footage displays a spoof document, titled “HOA Guidelines,” beside an image of an enormous inflatable reindeer edging into a neighbor’s yard—a clearly AI‑generated picture. Trovinger later confirmed that both the fictitious text and the whimsical holiday image were custom‑made for the ad. Copilot’s on‑screen response advises repositioning the inflatable to avoid crossing the property boundary. When the reviewer tested this scenario independently, Copilot could indeed identify the pertinent regulation stating that large inflatables must remain within one’s own lot line, but its advice grew vague beyond that, waffling between cautious speculation and deflection.
One last moment punctuates the commercial’s festive narrative: the appearance of Santa Claus himself. In the closing sequence, the jolly red‑suited icon earnestly asks Copilot why toy production is running behind schedule. In a playful twist, the chatbot quips that the elves’ productivity decline stems from excessive hot‑cocoa consumption. The reviewer wryly suggests an alternate reason—that the workshop’s management is too busy integrating AI into every process to notice the slowdown.
Ultimately, Microsoft’s marketing division shows a certain self‑awareness by including this tongue‑in‑cheek finale. It almost admits that the ad’s promise—that Copilot can seamlessly manage the chaos of holiday preparations—is a polished fantasy more than an attainable reality. The reviewer concludes that placing unwavering faith in such AI assistance is as fanciful as believing in Santa Claus himself.
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Sourse: https://www.theverge.com/report/847056/microsoft-copilot-ai-vision-pc-assistant-christmas-holiday-ad
