- Pavan Davuluri, head of Windows at Microsoft, has responded to negative reaction about AI in Windows 11
- The exec admitted “we know we have work to do on the experience” in terms of getting the basics of Windows 11 right
- That includes fixes for “everyday usability, from inconsistent dialogs to power user experiences” – but the exec misses a key point in terms of the hate for ads in Windows 11
The Microsoft executive who caught a lot of flak for comments about how Windows 11 is ‘evolving into an agentic OS’ has responded to that reaction, and assured the unhappy folks out there that Microsoft isn’t just focusing on AI with the desktop OS.
Windows Central reports that Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s VP of Windows and Devices, has posted again on X, after disabling comments for the original post that sparked this controversy – evidently looking to put a proverbial lid on things here.
Hey Gergely, I am responding here, and I think this applies to a bunch of the comments that people have made. I mean, a lot of comments 🙂.The team (and I) take in a ton of feedback. We balance what we see in our product feedback systems with what we hear directly. They don’t…November 15, 2025
In the new post responding to a complaint from author Gergely Orosz, who questions why software developers should choose Windows “with this weird direction [Microsoft is] doubling down on” (meaning AI), Davuluri explains that he is responding to a “bunch of the comments that people have made”.
Davuluri says: “The team (and I) take in a ton of feedback … I’ve read through the comments and see focus on things like reliability, performance, ease of use and more.”
“But I want to spend a moment just on the point you are making, and I’ll boil it down, we care deeply about developers. We know we have work to do on the experience, both on the everyday usability, from inconsistent dialogs to power user experiences. When we meet as a team, we discuss these pain points and others in detail, because we want developers to choose Windows.”
Windows Central also noticed a swing and a miss from Microsoft with an advert for Copilot on X, which is pretty bad timing given this controversy around AI. Microsoft’s marketing department appears to be OK with the below promotional footage that shows Copilot making rather a hash of things.
Tech made simple. Copilot on Windows 11 helps you resize text like a pro. 🔠 @uravgconsumer pic.twitter.com/4vMXIiBNv7November 12, 2025
The footage shows someone getting help from Copilot with trying to change the text size (make it bigger) in Windows 11, but this isn’t a good demo of AI at all. Why not? Firstly, because Copilot only tells the user where to click initially, then the instructions trail off – meaning the again has to ask where to click next.
The next stumble, an outright mistake in this case, is that Copilot then ushers the user through to the menu to scale everything (icons, the whole interface), not just text – the text-only control is actually a separate menu (in Settings > Accessibility > Text size, as the reader context box on the X post makes clear).
Finally, the AI advises the user to choose 150% scaling when that’s already selected (they ignore it, and just click 200%, but there’s a confused pause before that happens).
If this is resizing text “like a pro” I’d hate to see it when Copilot’s guidance strays into amateurish realms – and none of this really helps Microsoft’s insistence on its big push with AI in Windows 11.
Analysis: the elephant-sized ads in the room
It is good to see Davuluri take the time to address the complaints from last week, although arguably, the exec didn’t have much choice – such was the snowballing of negative reaction and flood of media coverage that ensued.
It’s also heartening to see Davuluri acknowledge that Microsoft needs to do better in terms of everyday use and reliability of the OS, and smoothing over performance problems – which are still hanging around in Windows 11 years after its launch.
The constant stream of bugs – felt even more keenly since the big changes in Windows 11 24H2 (with its new Germanium platform, required for Arm-based Copilot+ PCs) – is certainly a big part of the problem for everyday users of Microsoft’s operating system.
As Windows Central points out, Microsoft’s constant drip-feeding of new features into Windows 11 causes trouble – and more bugs – so that ‘continuous innovation’ philosophy perhaps needs a rethink. In other words, mulling a switch to a model of rarer feature updates to give time for more thorough testing and bug squashing.
But beyond stability and reliability, what’s notably missing from Davuluri’s pledges on X is any comment on the bad feeling around Microsoft pushing folks this way and that to use its services. I’m sure you’re familiar with the various promotional slants in Windows 11, nudging you to use Edge or OneDrive, or Windows Backup, or to sign up for a Microsoft account, or even buy games. All this advert-like activity is what some folks are calling out as a lack of respect for the Windows user in the thread of the exec’s new post (that and Microsoft’s telemetry, or collecting of data on the system).
Or, as Orosz – the person Davuluri was replying to – puts it, flagging up a comment from someone else (fj), Windows 11 “should be an operating system, not an ecosystem”, and Microsoft is losing sight of who the platform is built for. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Windows 11 at times feels less about the user experience, and more about the Microsoft experience, and in a paid-for OS, this simply isn’t acceptable or excusable.
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