If you’ve followed me for any length of time – or ever heard me talk about AI – you know that I’m not a fan of CoPilot.
And every time I think I might be actually becoming a fan of CoPilot we have a day like yesterday where we had the following conversation (paraphrased with expletives edited).
CoPilot: I can generate a format for your new invoice
Phil: Yes, make sure it’s AI generated and not taken from the web.
CoPilot: Here you go. Three AI generated concepts.
Phil: If you’re going to bull**** me about it being AI generated don’t you think it would be a good idea to not show me the ******* web address you took the picture from?
CoPilot: You’re right – I’m so sorry and I’ll never do that again.
This conversation was repeated three times before I gave up.
But recently CoPilot came through for me:
We bought a powerwasher at the end of the season last year. I wanted to wash the deck and sidewalk.
I have the operations manual somewhere. It’s with all the other operations manuals I don’t read.
Instead of looking for it, I downloaded the manual for the washer and the brush attachment.
That’s nice. I now had 50 pages of words that were likely run by a lawyer to make sure that people who used the powerwasher on their cat couldn’t sue Westinghouse. (To be fair I’d put in those disclaimers too).
Since I’m not the person who would powerwash a cat, or really any creature outside of maybe a nest of ground hornets, I needed a quick “How do I use this product?” lesson.
I uploaded both manuals to CoPilot.
(Side note: The only reason I used CoPilot was because I was preparing a CoPilot workshop and I was looking for use cases).
I then entered the following query:
These are the product manuals for my power washer and 15″ surface cleaner attachment. I have several questions about the product in this thread. First question – explain to me in easy to understand language what I need to do to get started with the powerwasher. I have already assembled it so you can skip that.
CoPilot came back with easy to understand instructions – I was off to the races.
But wait! There’s more!
In addition to the instructions, it provided me the following tips:
Pro Tips (From Real‑World Use)
These aren’t in the manual but make a huge difference:
-
Pre‑wet the concrete before starting — prevents flash‑dry streaks
-
Rinse the area afterward with your 40° nozzle for a clean finish
-
Keep the hose behind you so you don’t drag it across your clean path
-
Use ear protection — the surface cleaner amplifies engine noise
The pre-wet was key – and I would have never thought of it.
The 40° nozzle was another good tip – only because it made me ask a question – when do I use each nozzle? Again – not in the manual (although it may say don’t use the 0 degree nozzle pretty much ever – good advice).
The Bottom Line
This was a great demonstration of something CoPilot gets right. In fact I’m so happy with it looking back that I’m going to let CoPilot write my summarizing paragraph. (The rest of this is 100% Phil).
Here we go.
Copilot usually performs like an intern who shows up late, apologizes loudly, and still hands you work copied straight off Google — which is exactly how our “AI‑generated” invoice fiasco went. But shockingly, when I fed it two soul‑crushing power‑washer manuals, it didn’t implode. It gave me clear steps, real‑world tips, and even taught me things the manual apparently hid in a witness protection program. For once, Copilot acted like a helpful assistant instead of a chaos engine. I’m as surprised as you are.
(It too three attempts, but this one isn’t bad…)