Microsoft hands Copilot haters and 'Microslop' pushers yet more ammunition with 'how to' videos that showcase an embarrassing use of AI | Tech Radar

Overview

Microsoft hands Copilot haters and 'Microslop' pushers yet more ammunition with 'how to' videos that showcase an embarrassing use of AI

Because everyone needs an extra Start button in Windows 11

Details

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Microsoft has used Copilot to generate images for 'how to' articles

Some of these pics have gone badly wrong, showing parts of the Windows 11 interface featuring glaring mistakes

This is embarrassing at the very least, and possibly confusing for the less tech-savvy

Microsoft is using AI to generate screenshots to go with its 'how to' articles, and with some of these grabs getting things painfully wrong, this is effectively a lesson in how not to use AI.

These instructional guides are on the Windows Learning Center, and they are useful tutorials, although, as Windows Latest points out, many of the articles have imagery generated by Copilot.

We know this because the captions accompanying those pictures state that the image is "AI art created via Copilot", and so this is really Microsoft's way of advertising how good its AI is at generating pics. Or trying to do that, anyway.

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The catch is that the AI has messed up on some occasions. As Windows Latest notes, there's a major faux pas with the article relating to using widgets in Windows 11, where a provided screenshot shows a completely different-looking widget panel.

While an experienced user will realize this is just an illustrative example, less knowledgeable people may not — perhaps to the point where they start wondering why their widget panel looks completely different, or indeed how they get it to change to this seemingly alternative format.

That's misleading, then, but there are worse offenders. Tweak Town highlighted further examples, including one where the AI has hallucinated and produced two Start menu icons on the taskbar.

This is present with the Snipping Tool tutorial, or it was, as Microsoft has now removed the image (unsurprisingly). Technically, the duplicated Start buttons weren't actually the same, and one isn't a Start button at all (if you zoom in), but they appear to be at first glance. And one is on the left, while the second one — and all the other icons — are centered in the taskbar, which doesn't make any sense. (You can have the taskbar icons left or center-aligned, but not both.)

Clearly, the AI has gone awry with a number of screenshots, and Tweak Town cites further examples, including someone playing a game on a laptop using a controller, seemingly engaged in that pursuit, but looking away from the screen towards the other side of the room. Oops.

Microsoft is not short of money in its coffers to pay for photoshoots to get this kind of imagery spot-on, of course, so this isn't a good look. That said, it seems the company is using these images to advertise Copilot's image creation skills, but if so, the poor-quality examples where things are just wrong hardly produce a good impression here. As observed at the outset, if anything, this is a warning, showing how using AI can go off the rails.

Crucially, if Microsoft is going to use AI in this way, you'd imagine there'd be a human editor vetting the quality of the images and ensuring they fit the article with no glaring issues. So that hasn't happened, or the overseer of these AI creations has made a shoddy job of quality control.

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The end result is that it looks like Microsoft is rushing and cutting corners with AI here, and that hands ammunition directly to the 'Microslop' crowd. This is poorly quality-controlled, errant AI imagery that's been employed without enough thought. While not every picture is problematic, there are enough that it looks unfortunate to say the least.

Microsoft needs to exercise more discipline in the way it uses AI, and you'd think the company would be keenly aware of this in light of the whole 'Microslop' nickname that caught on at the start of 2026. Sadly not, it seems, and that leads to the kind of comment made by this Redditor: "It's like all of their creativity got ruined by AI..."

➡️ Read our full guide to the best laptops

1. Best overall: Apple Mac Book Air 13-inch M4
2. Best budget: Asus Chromebook CM14
3. Best Windows 11 laptop Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch
4. Best gaming: Razer Blade 16
5. Best for pros Mac Book Pro 16-inch (M4 Pro)

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for Tech Radar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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Key Takeaways

• Microsoft hands Copilot haters and 'Microslop' pushers yet more ammunition with 'how to' videos that showcase an embarrassing use of AI

• Because everyone needs an extra Start button in Windows 11

• When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission

• Microsoft has used Copilot to generate images for 'how to' articles

• Some of these pics have gone badly wrong, showing parts of the Windows 11 interface featuring glaring mistakes