I am fed up with Copilot, and I am unsure it may be mounted

At this level, I’m about prepared to surrender on Microsoft Copilot totally.

It’s not simply the “Microslop” tag that some have pinned on Microsoft or a dogmatic objection to synthetic intelligence as a complete. An increasing number of, Copilot simply looks like a rubbish buffet of synthetic stupidity, licensing points, and design selections that don’t put customers first.

For years, all I’ve needed to do was for some program to scan my Microsoft OneDrive account and seek for duplicated recordsdata and photographs. I’m nicely conscious that there are “dedupe” companies on the market, however I’m nonetheless very leery of giving a third-party service entry to the whole thing of my cloud backups. So, after I noticed that Microsoft now provides the power to ship Copilot brokers into your OneDrive recordsdata (model 1.0!), I assumed, hey, this was value testing. It was time for a superb spring cleansing of my cloud storage.

If solely.

This got here only a day after Copilot supposedly gained the power to set reminders (spoiler: whereas it claims it will probably, it will probably’t), following an effort final yr to humanize the assistant by giving it a face and letting it bear in mind issues about you. On one hand, Microsoft desires this to be the following Cortana — after killing off the much more amiable Cortana — however in enterprise, the main focus is solely on making the software as efficient as attainable, at the same time as these subscriptions are consistently being tweaked.

However I wasn’t specializing in that. All I wanted, Microsoft advised me, was OneDrive on the net… what else? A Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

That meant switching from a piece machine to a private laptop computer, one with a paid Microsoft 365 household plan. Did I’ve a Copilot plan? I requested Copilot.

“No. There isn’t any e mail, file, or private document in your Microsoft 365 knowledge confirming that you’ve a Microsoft 365 Copilot license assigned to your account.”

Okay, that was simple. However was it proper? Apparently not? I found that sure, Copilot may search my OneDrive account. I rapidly turned up my file containing my benchmarks for Intel’s Core Extremely 300 or “Panther Lake” chips that I’d run at CES 2026.

So, if that labored, Copilot ought to have the ability to see my Footage folder and I may start looking for duplicated recordsdata, proper? Mistaken.

OK, let’s affirm…

What? I went backwards and forwards. Are you able to see this file? Sure. However you possibly can’t see this folder? No.

Because it seems, Copilot apparently may see all the things on my “Dwelling” web page of OneDrive for the Internet — with a bunch of current, particular person recordsdata — nevertheless it couldn’t see the folder construction of the “My recordsdata” tab on OneDrive.com. In any respect. Performing a fast edit of a photograph within the Footage folder to convey it into the house web page didn’t work, both.

So is Copilot an professional find random paperwork floating across the prime stage of my OneDrive account? Properly, no, probably not. Because it occurred, I had a few dozen recordsdata from 2023 in that area, so I requested OneDrive to seek out “all recordsdata from 2023.” It couldn’t discover a single one. But it surely did dig via my Outlook and Calendar and provides me an inventory of recordsdata from 2023 or referencing the yr. Nice. Strong work.

Keep in mind, this was all preliminary work, simply to see if I may ultimately create an agent to seek for duplicate photographs. May I? Most likely not. Microsoft’s instance, under, exhibits off OneDrive’s capability to create an agent, one thing my model of OneDrive.com doesn’t. However even when I may make it work, Microsoft’s instance asks you to pick out numerous recordsdata, then use Copilot to research them. I needed one thing completely different: analyze all my recordsdata, then pull out a couple of duplicates to be managed or discarded. May I? I nonetheless don’t know!

Cynically, I wager I wouldn’t have been in a position to. In terms of Microsoft, “intelligence” doesn’t actually equal alternative. Microsoft nonetheless has PTSD from insane AIs proposing marriage to journalists, and all the things nonetheless feels very restricted and managed. It’s only a shiny new AI character main you thru the identical cellphone tree whilst you futilely shout “discuss to agent!”

I used to be left with many questions. Was this characteristic not but accessible? Was it not but accessible to me? Did I’ve the fitting subscription or did I would like yet one more one? Was Copilot working as meant, or was I prompting it incorrectly? I knew I had given Copilot permission to look my OneDrive, and it had carried out so. However why was it fixated on OneDrive.com’s Dwelling display screen and never the deeper “My recordsdata” construction? And why was I losing a lot time on one thing that clearly wasn’t going to work?

In some unspecified time in the future, attempting to untangle the knot grew to become exhausting. I hate having to just accept when Microsoft says a brand new characteristic is accessible, it might nonetheless be gated behind a subscription, caught in a preview, or just not supplied in a selected geography or to a particular buyer. It’s so rattling annoying to appreciate that Apple could have chosen the proper technique by largely sitting AI out. An hour later, all I needed to do was reincarnate Sam Kinison, march him into Microsoft’s places of work, and have him yell “Repair it repair it FIX IT” till somebody lastly made it work.

Certain, Copilot is okay for some issues: superior search, picture era, possibly some analysis. It really works for some individuals. However for all the things else? I feel I’ll look elsewhere. ChatGPT dominates AI use, anyway.

Ultimately, I wasn’t in a position to truly test-drive Microsoft’s agentic AI inside OneDrive. I by no means received to that time. As an alternative, I discovered that the seatbelts didn’t latch and the door wouldn’t shut, all earlier than I even tried beginning the engine. So why proceed? Time to possibly simply stroll away.