Microsoft really wants you to update to Windows 11 already, and it seemingly thinks that bragging about all the incredible ways it’s stuffing AI into every nook and cranny of its latest operating system will encourage the pesky holdovers still clutching to Windows 10 to finally let go.

Actually, saying Microsoft is merely “stuffing” AI into its product might be underselling the scope of its vision. Navjot Virk, corporate vice president of Windows experiences, told The Verge in a recent interview that Microsoft’s goal was to transform Windows into a “canvas for AI” — and, as if that wasn’t enough, an “agentic OS.”

No longer is it sufficient to just do stuff on your desktop. Now, there will be a bunch of AI agents you can access straight from the taskbar, perhaps the most precious area of UI real estate, that can do stuff for you, like researching in the background and accessing files and folders.

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But hey, is any of the AI stuff useful, at least? After trying out Microsoft’s “agentic OS” for a whole week, Antonio G. Di Benedetto at The Verge reported wearily that “It failed at everything I asked it to do.”

Talking to Windows’ Copilot AI makes a computer feel incompetent
Copilot’s limitations are ever-present, and it can lead you astray on even the basics.

by
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
Nov 18, 2025, 7:00 AM CST


It’s not hard to understand the AI future Microsoft is betting billions on — a world where computers understand what you’re saying and do things for you. It’s right there in the ads for the latest Copilot PCs, where people cheerfully talk to their laptops and they talk back, answering questions in natural language and even doing things for them. The tagline is straightforward: “The computer you can talk to.”

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I spent a week with Copilot, asking it the same questions Microsoft has in its ads, and tried to get help with tasks I’d find useful. And time after time, Copilot got things wrong, made stuff up, and spoke to me like I was a child.

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In gaming — a thing Microsoft specifically advertises as a use for Copilot Vision — it offered the most basic and vague information. For Hollow Knight: Silksong, it gave me only cursory instructions, sounding like a child presenting their book report based solely on the cover. (Actually, talking to Copilot is so much like this, it’s uncanny.) In Balatro, it couldn’t accurately identify the cards in my hand, but it did give me irrelevant info on mechanics from other card games.

I tried to meet Copilot where it’s at, but it failed at everything I asked it to do. Like much of the generative AI tech out there, it’s an incomplete solution in search of problems. There could be something useful here, especially for the accessibility community, if it can one day fully control Windows. But talking to Copilot today makes powerful computers seem incompetent. It’s hard to see how we get to Microsoft’s bold vision of the agentic AI future from what it’s shipping to real consumers today.