Microsoft's $10 Premium Copilot Agents Flunk Work Tests, Offering Hallucinations and Broken File Links
Updated
Updated · ZDNet · Jun 3
Microsoft's $10 Premium Copilot Agents Flunk Work Tests, Offering Hallucinations and Broken File Links
2 articles · Updated · ZDNet · Jun 3
Summary
$10 bought a month of Microsoft 365 Premium, but ZDNET's tests found Copilot agents often produced unusable work, misinformation and time-wasting troubleshooting instead of reliable help.
In Excel, the Analyst agent suggested workbook improvements but failed to deliver the promised file, repeatedly returning non-clickable 'sandbox' paths and eventually blaming the chat interface for broken attachments.
In research tasks, the Microsoft 365 Premium Researcher agent did not recognize the very plan it was supposed to explain, then produced only a shallow feature summary drawn from third-party sources.
In Windows troubleshooting, Copilot spent about 20 minutes proposing confident certificate fixes, PowerShell commands and reboots that did not work; the actual solution was clearing a single connection checkbox.
The results undercut Microsoft's broader push to make Windows and Microsoft 365 an 'agentic OS,' even as the company pours heavy spending into AI models, data centers and premium Copilot features.