- Microsoft has used Copilot to generate images for ‘how to’ articles
- Some of these images have gone badly wrong, showing parts of the Windows 11 interface with obvious flaws
- At the very least, this is embarrassing and possibly confusing for the less tech-savvy
Microsoft uses AI to generate screenshots to go with its ‘how to’ articles, and with some of these tricks getting things painfully wrong, this is actually a lesson in how not to use AI.
These how-to guides are on the Windows Learning Center and are useful tutorials, although, as Windows Latest points out, many of the articles have images generated by Copilot.
We know this because the captions accompanying these images 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 images. Or trying to at least.
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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 about using widgets in Windows 11, with an accompanying screenshot showing a completely different-looking widget panel.
While an experienced user will realize that this is only an illustrative example, less savvy people may not – perhaps to the point where they start to wonder why their widget panel looks completely different, or indeed how to get it to switch to this seemingly alternate format.
That is misleading, but there are worse offenders. TweakTown highlighted additional examples, including one where the AI hallucinated and produced two Start menu icons on the taskbar.
This is present with the Snipping Tool tutorial, or 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 it looks like it at first glance. And one is on the left while the other – and all the other icons – are centered in the taskbar, which makes no sense. (You can have the taskbar icons left or center aligned, but not both.)
It’s clear that the AI has gone awry with a number of screenshots, and TweakTown cites additional examples, including a person playing a game on a laptop using a controller who is apparently engaged in that pursuit but is looking away from the screen towards the other side of the room. Oops.
Analysis: ammunition
Of course, Microsoft doesn’t lack money in the coffers to pay for photo shoots to get these kinds of images spot-on, so this is not a good look. That said, it looks like the company is using these images to advertise Copilot’s imaging capabilities, but if that’s the case, the poor quality examples where things are just wrong hardly make a good impression here. As observed at the outset, if anything, this is a warning that shows how the use of AI can go off the rails.
Crucially, if Microsoft is going to use AI in this way, you’d imagine there would be a human editor checking the quality of the images and making sure they fit the article without glaring issues. So it hasn’t happened, or the overseers of these AI creations have done a poor job of quality control.
The end result is that it looks like Microsoft is rushing and cutting corners with AI here, giving ammunition directly to the ‘Microslop’ crowd. These are poorly quality controlled, errant AI images that have been used without enough thought. While not all images are 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 paying close attention to this in light of the whole ‘Microslop’ nickname that caught on at the start of 2026. Unfortunately not, it seems, leading to the kind of comment this Redditor made: “It’s like been ruined by the AI…”
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