Microsoft reveals it fooled thousands of people with this Copilot+ PC ad

Microsoft has confirmed that an advertisement it released for Copilot+ PCs more than 2 months ago was created using generative AI, subverting the expectations of everyone who has already viewed it.

Microsoft revealed the ad was made with generative AI in a new Microsoft Design post, where it states the Visual Design team at Microsoft was required to create an ad for the company's latest Surface Pro and Surface Laptop for Business Copilot+ PCs, but the challenge was to have it done within a month. In order to overcome this challenge, the team outsourced the work to generative AI, with Microsoft's Windows + Devices Visual Design team explaining in the blog post that by doing this, it enabled them to save "90% of the time and cost it would typically take."

The team stated that it created a script, storyboards, and a pitch deck for the advertisement using unspecified AI tools. Since AI still struggles with human motion, the team combined the AI-generated scenes with some human-created ones to fill in the areas where the AI was lacking. What's interesting is that before Microsoft revealed the ad was created with AI, none of the thousands of people who viewed it suspected it was AI-generated, which is indicative of exponentially improving quality of AI-generated content.

"With a small budget and a tiny amount of time, we were able to accomplish in a month what would have traditionally required exponentially more resources. We probably saved 90% of the time and cost it would typically take," said Brian Townsend, visual designer on Microsoft's Windows + Devices Visual Design team, stated in the blog post