Microsoft’s record with advertising has been hit or miss, with the company usually racking up more misses than hits, but its new Super Bowl spot for this year highlighting its Copilot AI may be among its best efforts yet.
Alongside the introduction of a handful of new features for the pre-generative artificial intelligence platform named Copilot, Microsoft also released an ad that is prepped to run during Super Bowl LVIII (or 58).
Alongside a new Super Bowl spot, Microsoft’s EVP and consumer marketing chief Yusuf Mehdi announced a new redesigned mobile and web experience for Copilot with a centered carousel of prompt examples to help new users get started.
Microsoft is also integrating its text-to-image tool, renamed to Microsoft Designer, which is now part of a single Copilot area. Both Microsoft Designer and the text-based Copilot platforms are powered by the same set of OpenAI ChatGPT-3 large language models.
In addition to adding visuals in the carousel area of the Copilot ‘home screen’ there is also a new designated area for the history of user generated prompts dubbed Notebook located to the top right of the page. Users can now clearly navigate to the Notebook section to revisit previously generated images and text responses.
Mehdi also mentioned that folks who sign up for Copilot Pro will get additional image generating resources unlocked, allowing them to resize images from portrait to landscape, as well as the potential for a new “immersive” editing canvas and revamping Microsoft Designer with a new Designer GPT-powered feature in the future.
On the marketing side, Microsoft’s @Microsoft Twitter handle previewed the new Copilot AI focused ad with the caption, “Microsoft Copilot, your everyday AI companion. @MSFTCopilot is available to anyone, anywhere, on any device.”
The minute long video begins with captions appearing before individuals stating various projected negative sentiments of people doubting their abilities to “get my degree,” “make my movie,” “learn something new,” and more.
At the videos crescendo, Microsoft Copilot is first introduced following the phrase “watch me”. The remainder of the ad spot displays various individuals using Microsoft Copilot on smartphones and desktops to generate storyboard images for movie scripts, write code for 3D open world games, prompting quizzes for organic chemistry courses, create branding signage, and more.
Microsoft’s Super Bowl Ad ends with a black screen that shows the redesigned Copilot logo above the sentence, “Your everyday AI companion.”
Over the past year, Microsoft has been toiling away at getting its AI platform ready for mainstream adoption. Since it first began publicly talking about its AI efforts, Microsoft has extracted the platform from its stagnant Bing brand, added two paid subscription options, expanded its interoperability across different generative pre-trained transformers, as well as stumble through addressing emerging security and privacy concerns.
A year later, a log redesign, a rebranded platform and productivity pivot, Microsoft’s Copilot efforts are well within alignment for the average everyday user to not only grasp but find functionally relevant to their everyday workflow.
With new hardware incorporating a dedicated Copilot key on the horizon, as well as new SoCs supporting AI-led feature sets, 2024 may be the year Microsoft and others finally push AI mainstream and this recent Super Bowl Ad could be significant catalyst.
