Earlier quoted context omitted.
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This feels a bit threatening. Just want to call it out. I also disagree with the decision but I respect that someone came forward and took responsibility. That helps build our shared understanding of what happened. It’s hard and not something we should discourage.
Copilot edited an ad into my PR
301–310 of 704 posts
Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR
#302How long before the LLM makes sponsored decisions in the actual implementation? "It looks like the user wants to add a database, I've gone ahead and implemented the database using today's sponsor: MongoDB"
Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR
#303Tim from the Copilot coding agent team here. We've now disabled these tips in pull requests created by or touched by Copilot, so you won't see this happen again for future PRs. We've been including product tips in PRs created by Copilot coding agent. The goal was to help developers learn new ways to use the agent in their workflow. But hearing the feedback here, and on reflection, this was the wrong judgement call. W…
“We won’t do something like this again” A verifiable claim! I put it at 75% you totally will, but if any manifolders think I’m full of it it should converge to something less cynical https://manifold.markets/HastingsGreer/will-microsoft-copilo...
Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microslop for a while now seems to be testing exactly how much you can abuse the user before they move somewhere else. Windows is a prime example. Everything is ads, tracking, popups, annoyances, etc. They have got away with it for a while because a lot of users have largely been stuck, but they are in real trouble now with Apple providing meaningful competition.
Yeah but at least a dozen Microsoft employees went on a seemingly scripted blitz on X about how they’re ready to start listening to feedback and… * checks notes * Only have copilot shoehorned into most things instead of everything. And some shit about windows developers which isn’t exactly going to fix the glaring issues with the OS itself.
So what was the purpose of all that telemetry they collected then? Because it doesn't seem to have made the OS like what the users want it to be.
Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR
#305Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR
#306Tim from the Copilot coding agent team here. We've now disabled these tips in pull requests created by or touched by Copilot, so you won't see this happen again for future PRs. We've been including product tips in PRs created by Copilot coding agent. The goal was to help developers learn new ways to use the agent in their workflow. But hearing the feedback here, and on reflection, this was the wrong judgement call. W…
Hi Tim.. Why is there no pushback from grounded individuals against these decisions ?
Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR
#307Tim from the Copilot coding agent team here. We've now disabled these tips in pull requests created by or touched by Copilot, so you won't see this happen again for future PRs. We've been including product tips in PRs created by Copilot coding agent. The goal was to help developers learn new ways to use the agent in their workflow. But hearing the feedback here, and on reflection, this was the wrong judgement call. W…
“We won’t do something like this again” A verifiable claim! I put it at 75% you totally will, but if any manifolders think I’m full of it it should converge to something less cynical https://manifold.markets/HastingsGreer/will-microsoft-copilo...
Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR
#308This "ad" is not exactly new. Looks like MS thinks it's a "tip" rather than an ad. I don't know if Raycast team even knows about this. https://github.com/PlagueHO/plagueho.github.io/pull/24#issue... Copilot has been adding "(emoji) (tip)" thing since May 2025. GitHub copilot was released in May 2025, so basically it has had an ad since beginning. There are 1.5m of these things in GitHub. https://github.com/search?q=%…
If Microsoft is willing to put ads into your PRs via Copilot like this, imagine what they could put into your codebase itself with Copilot. Or what Microsoft could do, run, install, etc on/from your computer while running their Copilot agents. This is the same company that puts ads in your start menu and reinserts them with Windows updates even if you manually removed them.
Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
To play devil’s advocate^, wouldn’t it be plagiarism if it didn’t? ^I find that turn of phrase to be particularly pleasing in this context.
No, it is a tool. My IDE doesn't pretend to be a cohauthor of my work, neither should an LLM.
* I am not a lawyer, I'm going by articles talking about this
** I think the phrases are "copyright washing" and "plagiarism machines", amongst others
Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
To play devil’s advocate^, wouldn’t it be plagiarism if it didn’t? ^I find that turn of phrase to be particularly pleasing in this context.
No. Plagiarism applies to people, not tools.
This means that people saying "plagiarism" of an LLM, means that LLMs are necessarily in the set of things that can do plagiarism, regardless of if those same people would ever say this about a spanner.
And you can also think about it a different way: a book is a tool for storing and distributing information, photocopying it is still plagiarism when done without attribution. Likewise, taking the output of an LLM, which is a tool for generating text in response to a prompt, without attribution, is as much plagiarism as if it came from a book.
IMO, what matters most is that a lot of people want to be aware of if/when some content came from an LLM vs. from a human. That makes attribution useful, which makes it important to get right. And that's still the case even if you still object to the specific word "plagiarism".