This article explains how to work around the issue where the Copilot app fails to take pictures.
Sounds boring, right? But hey – even with all of the gripes I have about Copilot, I do use it daily, and I’d really like it to work. Because when it does work – well, about 50% of the times it does work – it’s really helpful, and it does make me more productive overall.
Okay. That’s enough of a sales pitch. We all know what it is, we have our opinions and experiences – now, if you want to know how I fixed passing pictures to the Copilot app, read on.
And just to clarify, not the “M365 Copilot (Office)” app – it’s a different beast altogether, and I don’t know if it even has support for pictures yet because I can’t log in.
Problem
To me this happened when I was outdoors, walking to my office, and saw a bird I didn’t recognize. I figured I would try taking a picture with Copilot and ask it what the bird was. That’s a great use case for AI, right?
But alas, it was not meant to be.
When trying to add a picture to the Copilot chat (the old “Bing chat” app, i.e. the “Consumer Copilot”), the app either freezes or doesn’t let you hit the shutter button, thus rendering the picture-taking mode absolutely useless. Reproduced on OnePlus Pro 10 5G, but probably happens on a lot of Android phones.
As a side note, I’ve reported the issue to Microsoft, but since bug reports are pretty useless without proper reproduction steps – here they are (in case someone actually reads the report).
If you don’t care about the repro steps, jump to “Solution” further down.
So in short, here’s how to reproduce the issue. Guidance in text on the left, and a proper video on the right.
1. Select “+” to expand attachment options
Instead of writing a message, hit “+“.
2. Select “Photo” to open camera and media selector
You should get a bunch of options, one of which is “Photo”. Click that.
3. Line up your shot and hit the shutter button
Camera should open. Give it a good 10 seconds, and if it doesn’t, restart the Copilot app.
4. Observe as your clicks are fully in vain: the button shalt not let you proceed;
Well, yeah – that was it. Your efforts are futile.
The shutter button won’t do anything, and you will not be able to try and add a picture.
Reason
I assume this is because my camera would take too large pictures.
Why do I assume this is the reason? Well, observe this..
1. Take a picture with your camera
You can take a normal picture with your phone’s camera, and attach it to the chat, right?
Well, go ahead, take that picture, and give it a go…
2. Hit “+” and select “Photo” to open the camera and media selection again
Same thing as before – we need to get to the camera mode, even if we won’t take a picture, and even if it’ll take bit to load up the camera.
3. Select the “Album” icon
This should open your media gallery.
4. Select your photo
Select the picture you just took.
5. Observe in shock, as Copilot collapses under the weight of 10 Megabytes
So much for just taking a picture instead.
Solution
So we can’t use our camera directly, or any picture that’s over 10 Megabytes (which means practically all of them). What CAN we do?
Well, there’s a bunch of options available for you. I’ll start with the dumbest one first.
1. Make your pictures smaller
You can always do what the app says, even though at least on Android that’s laborious enough that I would just not use Copilot with pictures if I had to do this – you can take a picture, pack it to be smaller, and only then pass it on to the Copilot.
On Android, I guess you would need to install another app to do that – neither the app called “Photos” (also known as Google Photos) nor an app called “Photos” (which is a gallery app by Oppo – very creative naming) on my Android phone are able to resize photos.
And while I’m sure there’s an app for that, I don’t want another app to be the copilot for my copilot, so I refuse to do this.
2(?). Change your camera to a lower resolution
Just thought I’d note this hear – I don’t think this works. The Copilot app will take full resolution pictures, and then fail, regardless of your camera configuration.
Or at least I couldn’t produce any changes to the functionality by messing with the configuration. If you have a better luck, please let me know!
3. Use the selfie camera instead
This sounds dumb, but since it works, it’s not dumb. Right?
Hit the little “change camera” button – that’ll change to the selfie camera – at the bottom of the screen.
Loading the selfie camera usually takes anything from 10 to about 60 seconds (I think that’s the power of AI right there – hitting the button will call an Azure AI API that’ll then think about it for 59 seconds before it calls an API to switch the camera, but once it DOES load, it’ll take lower resolution pictures.
Low enough for the Copilot to be able to handle them 😅
And below – the results!
Anyway. That’s that. Let me know how it goes for you!
He's been a developer from 2004 (starting with PHP and Java), and he's been working on .NET projects, Azure, Office 365, SharePoint and a lot of other stuff. He's also Microsoft MVP for Azure.
This is his personal professional (e.g. professional, but definitely personal) blog.
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