Limitations of Microsoft Edge Copilot AI in Summarizing YouTube Videos

Microsoft's Edge Copilot AI faces limitations in summarizing YouTube videos effectively. The chatbot's summarization feature relies heavily on preprocessed video data, existing subtitles, and transcripts. Essentially, Edge Copilot doesn't directly summarize videos; instead, it focuses on summarizing the text transcripts associated with the videos.

As spotted by MSPowerUser, Parakhin writes, “In order for it to work, we need to pre-process the video. If the video has subtitles - we can always fallback on that, if it does not and we didn’t preprocess it yet - then it won’t work,” in response to a question.

The functionality extends to Microsoft 365, where Copilot can summarize Teams video meetings and calls for customer service agents. However, in both instances, accurate summarization depends on Microsoft transcribing the audio content first. Similarly, Copilot on Microsoft Stream can summarize any video, but users must generate a written transcript for the tool to function.

The discussion arose when designer Pietro Schirano shared a screen recording of Edge Copilot summarizing a YouTube video about the GTA VI trailer. The demonstration appeared successful, with Copilot promptly generating a summary, complete with highlights and timestamps after the user pressed the "Generate video summary" button in the Copilot sidebar. It's worth noting that various platforms, such as YouTube and Vimeo, offer automatic transcript and subtitle generation if users enable this feature. When questioned about the applicability of Copilot to publicly available videos, Microsoft's representative Parakhin on X stated, "Should work for most videos."

Copilot exemplifies Microsoft's engagement in the generative AI race alongside competitors like Google. Recently, Google upgraded its YouTube extension for the Bard chatbot, enabling it to summarize video content and extract specific information. However, Google's Gemini update has faced scrutiny for potential inaccuracies and misrepresented capabilities in a demo, highlighting the challenges in the ongoing competition between these tech giants.