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

19 Mar 2026, 15:00 · TechRadar

News By Darren Allan published 19 March 2026

(Image credit: fizkes / Shutterstock)

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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. TweakTown 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.)

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