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Copilot edited an ad into my PR

notes.zachmanson.com

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Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#21

Post by pabrams »

onion2k wrote: post #11
daemin wrote: post #4

Using a LLM to fix a spelling mistake is retardedly lazy. Presumably they used a free version of the LLM, therefore it is completely understandable that it inserted a snippet of text advertising its use into the output. I mean using a free email provider also adds a line of text to the end of every email advertising the service by default - "Sent from iPhone" etc.

Using a LLM to fix a spelling mistake is retardedly lazy. If you do it manually, sure. If you have an agent watching for code changes and automatically opening PRs for small fixes that don't need a human-in-the-loop except for approving the change, it's the opposite of lazy. It eliminately all those tedious 1 point stories and let's the team focus on higher value work that actually needs a person to think about it. G…

That scenario doesn't require any explicit "summoning", and if there's a human in the loop approving the change, certainly they can fix the typo themself.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#22

Post by [deleted] »

onion2k wrote: post #11
daemin wrote: post #4

Using a LLM to fix a spelling mistake is retardedly lazy. Presumably they used a free version of the LLM, therefore it is completely understandable that it inserted a snippet of text advertising its use into the output. I mean using a free email provider also adds a line of text to the end of every email advertising the service by default - "Sent from iPhone" etc.

Using a LLM to fix a spelling mistake is retardedly lazy. If you do it manually, sure. If you have an agent watching for code changes and automatically opening PRs for small fixes that don't need a human-in-the-loop except for approving the change, it's the opposite of lazy. It eliminately all those tedious 1 point stories and let's the team focus on higher value work that actually needs a person to think about it. G…

[deleted]

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#26

Post by longislandguido »

nialse wrote: post #2

Microsoft injecting permanent ads in PRs? Has this been independently confirmed? Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.

> Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.

I'm reminded of Jay Mohr's legendary take some years back on the creepy Carl's Jr. commercials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJlYRS2Vqkw

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#28

Post by napo »

I wonder if 1) the PR was created using Raycast and this is the model signing its PR, or 2) if there was some prompt injection done at some point.

Either of these options would still be bad, but here the author suggests that it's just copilot that now just injects ads in its output.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#29

Post by oefrha »

WD-42 wrote: post #8

Why is copilot doing this? If they wanted to show ads couldn’t they… just show ads? Or is GitHub such a house of cards at this point that editing pr descriptions is the only way without risking another 9 of downtime?

If they show the ad on github.com, agents accessing the PR using (an outdated, ad-free version of) gh CLI won’t see it. /s

(That said I’m rather skeptical of this and would like to see more details of the process that produced this, and proof.)

Edit: Just noticed this official GitHub blog post from last month advertising Raycast, making this story a lot more believable: https://github.blog/changelog/2026-02-17-assign-issues-to-co...

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#30

Post by tossandthrow »

post_below wrote: post #10

Assuming this isn't a hoax, this seems like a huge, probably unintentional, mistake by MS. If they genuinely implemented something like this, whatever they made from new customers via ads couldn't possibly make up for the loss of good faith with developers and businesses. I suppose if it's real we'll see more reports soon, and maybe a mea culpa.

It is likely not a hoax and likely very intentional.

If you look at the positioning, someone has definitely justified that this is benign and a reasonable place to have an ad added in.

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