- Pavan Davuluri, head of Windows at Microsoft, has responded to backlash about AI in Windows 11
- The executive admitted “we know we have work to do with the experience” in terms of getting the fundamentals of Windows 11 right
- It includes fixes for “everyday usability, from inconsistent dialogs to super user experiences” – but the boss misses a key point about the hate for ads in Windows 11
The Microsoft executive who caught a lot of flak for comments about how Windows 11 is ‘evolving into an agent OS’, has responded to that backlash and reassured the unhappy folks out there that Microsoft isn’t just focusing on AI with the desktop OS.
Windows Central reports that Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s VP of Windows and Devices, has posted again on X after disabling comments on the original post that sparked this controversy — apparently looking to put a proverbial lid on things here.
Hi Gergely, I’m responding here and I think it applies to a lot of the comments that people have made. I mean, a lot of comments 🙂 The team (and I) receive a ton of feedback. We balance what we see in our product feedback systems with what we hear firsthand. They do not…15 November 2025
In the new post in response to a complaint from author Gergely Orosz, who questions why software developers should choose Windows “with this weird direction [Microsoft is] doubles on” (meaning AI), Davuluri explains that he is responding to a “bunch of the comments that people have made”.
Says Davuluri: “The team (and I) are receiving a ton of feedback … I’ve been reading through the comments and seeing a focus on things like reliability, performance, ease of use and more.”
“But I want to take a moment on the point you make and I want to boil it down, we care deeply about developers. We know we have work to do on the experience, both on the day-to-day usability, from inconsistent dialogs to super user experiences. When we meet as a team, we discuss these pain points and others in detail because we want developers to choose Windows.”
Technique made simple. Copilot on Windows 11 helps you resize text like a pro. 🔠 @uravgconsumer pic.twitter.com/4vMXIiBNv712 November 2025
The footage shows someone getting help from Copilot trying to change the text size (make it bigger) in Windows 11, but this is not a good demo of AI at all. Why not? First, because Copilot only tells the user where to click at first, the instructions follow – meaning he has to ask again where to click next.
The next stumbling block, an outright bug in this case, is that Copilot then takes the user through to the menu to scale everything (icons, the entire interface), not just text – the text-only control is actually a separate menu (in Settings > Accessibility > Text Size, as the reader’s context box on the X post makes clear).
Finally, the AI advises the user to select 150% scaling when it’s already selected (they ignore it and just click 200%, but there’s a confused pause before that happens).
If this resizes text “like a pro”, I’d hate to see Copilot’s guidance stray into amateurish realms – and none of this really helps Microsoft’s insistence on its big AI push in Windows 11.
Analysis: the elephant-sized ads in the room
It’s good to see Davuluri taking the time to address the complaints from last week, although the director arguably had little choice – such was the snowball of negative reactions and the flood of media coverage that followed.
It’s also encouraging to see Davuluri acknowledge that Microsoft needs to do better in terms of day-to-day use and operational security, and smoothing out performance issues – which are still hanging around Windows 11 years after launch.
The steady stream of bugs – felt even more acutely since the big changes in Windows 11 24H2 (with its new Germanium platform required for Arm-based Copilot+ PCs) – is certainly a big part of the problem for regular users of Microsoft’s operating system.
As Windows Central points out, Microsoft’s constant drip-feeding of new features into Windows 11 is causing problems – and more bugs – so the ‘continuous innovation’ philosophy may need a rethink. In other words, consider a shift to a model of less frequent feature updates to allow time for more thorough testing and bug squashing.
But beyond stability and reliability, what’s notably missing from Davuluri’s promises about X is any comment on the bad feeling around Microsoft pushing people one way or another to use its services. I’m sure you’re familiar with the various promotional slants in Windows 11 that encourage you to use Edge or OneDrive or Windows Backup or to sign up for a Microsoft account or even buy games. All this ad-like activity is what some people are calling a lack of respect for the Windows user in the director’s new post thread (that and Microsoft’s telemetry or system data collection).
Or as Orosz—the person Davuluri was responding to—puts it, flagging a comment from someone else (fj), Windows 11 “should be an operating system, not an ecosystem,” and Microsoft is losing track of who the platform is built for. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Windows 11 at times feels less about the user experience and more about the Microsoft experience, and in a paid OS this is simply not acceptable or excusable.
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