Microsoft has released another Copilot ad, this time holiday-themed, featuring users asking the AI to assist with lighting, cooking, decorations, and more. The ad is festive and cinematic, showing smart lights pulsing to music and toy production “delays” blamed on elves drinking too much cocoa. But testing the prompts from the ad reveals a different story: most of the Copilot actions do not work as advertised.
In the spot, a homeowner asks Copilot to sync holiday lights to music using a website called Relecloud. On screen, lights pulse to a song. The issue is Relecloud is not a real company, but a fictional example Microsoft has used in past case studies. When tested in real applications like Philips Hue, Copilot can identify some buttons correctly but often hallucinates elements that do not exist and misguides users.
Other ad scenarios include scaling a recipe, following IKEA assembly instructions, and checking HOA rules for decorations. Copilot often gives incomplete calculations, mislabels steps or ingredients, and defers judgment to the user rather than providing actionable guidance. In some cases it claims to highlight buttons or text on screen when nothing is actually there.
Even when shown real apps, Copilot struggles to reliably complete tasks. Recipe scaling only partially works, assembly instructions are misread, and lighting automation frequently fails to perform as intended. The ad’s holiday cheer masks the reality that these AI features are far from ready for everyday tasks.
Microsoft insists all Copilot responses in the ad are real responses generated by the AI at the time, shortened for brevity. Still, the disconnect between ad depiction and actual functionality points to a broader pattern: the promise of seamless AI assistance often outpaces what is technically achievable.
For consumers, this serves as a reminder that technology marketing can exaggerate capabilities, and even widely used AI assistants may not deliver on advertised promises. Understanding these gaps helps set realistic expectations for home automation, AI tools, and digital assistants.
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