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Copilot edited an ad into my PR

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Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#661

Post by heavyset_go »

neya wrote: post #221
heavyset_go wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI/ChatGPT/Codex, Anthropic/Claude and Google/Gemini all do this.

> OpenAI/ChatGPT/Codex, Anthropic/Claude and Google/Gemini all do this. 1. Everyone doing this doesn't mean it's acceptable. 2. Google Gemini explicitly says right under the chat box if you are a paid subscriber (Workspace): Your chats aren’t used to improve our models. Gemini is AI and can make mistakes. Not sure about the others.

My comment was not meant to excuse what they're doing, just to point out that it's the bad status quo for these services

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#662

Post by pinkmuffinere »

pavo-etc wrote: post #98
winrid wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already does that, too, with the co-author

I would argue that is a net positive, it is valuable to know if a language model was involved enough to be committing itself.

+1, it definitely changes the way I interact, and the amount of suspicion I would have for the code.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#663

Post by isjciwjdieh »

iso1631 wrote: post #501
simonw wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not seen any evidence that these were ads and not "tips". Ads implies someone was paying for them. Promoting internal product features is not the same thing - if it was then every piece of software that shows a tip would be an ad product, and would be regulated as such.

When apple puts an advert for an apple show in front of for all mankind, that's an advert. Maybe I put up with it and it just adds to my subconscious seething, or maybe I get the episode elsewhere because if I watch on jellyfin I don't have the advert. Of course that then harms the show as my viewing isn't counted, but they've cancelled it anyway so perhaps it doesn't really matter. If it isn't an advert, then at ver…

What? For All Mankind wasn’t cancelled.

Season 5 is coming out now with season 6 already confirmed coming—which, granted, will be its last, but that’s not a cancellation in any sense of the word.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#664

Post by isjciwjdieh »

BeetleB wrote: post #554
mannanj wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telling someone you did something that you actually didn't do isn't a gray area, it's a lie. Using AI tools to code and then hiding that is unethical imo.

> Telling someone you did something that you actually didn't do isn't a gray area, it's a lie. Pre-LLMs, various helper tools (including LSPs), would make code changes to improve the quality of the code - from simple things like adding a const specifier to a function, to changing the actual function being called. No one insisted that the commit shouldn't have the human's name on it.

These are not anywhere near equivalent. The fact that you think they are is laughable.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#665

Post by plastic041 »

antonvs wrote: post #327
plastic041 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> company with a $2.65 trillion market cap and an army of marketing professionals That's one reason I think they would argue it's not an ad. Another reasons are "recommendations" and "tips" and "suggestions" in my windows.

They might argue it's not an ad but they don't believe or think it's not an ad. There's a big difference.

Well, at least their PM thinks(or argue ) it's a tip[0]. Also it's pretty obvious I was just being sarcastic about MS's behaviors. I don't know why you are so mean but please don't be. Have a nice day.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47573233

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#666

Post by cookiengineer »

heavyset_go wrote: post #222
plastic041 wrote: post #118

This "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.

Can somebody explain to me why this is legal?

If anybody but Microsoft does this, it's called malware and they'll end up with an FBI visit and prison time.

Why are the judicative so skewed here in their judgements?

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#667

Post by RandyOrion »

Wow, just wow.

1.5M records of PRs affected. Does Microsoft copilot ask users for the permission of adding ads inside their PRs before actually doing the thing? Do users show their consents on this matter?

Now EVERYONE can see ads disguised as PRs on GitHub. Does Microsoft asks everyone for the permission of showing ads before actually doing the thing? Do users show their consents on this matter?

Good taste Microslop.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#668

Post by IAmGraydon »

timrogers wrote: post #250

Tim 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…

> The goal was to help developers learn new ways to use the agent in their workflow.

I appreciate the rest of your reply, but it would be generous to say you're stretching the truth here. Yes, the official MS statement is that these are "tips", but you, I, and everyone else here knows what this is.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#669

Post by trepaura »

50/50 it's a hallucination, and that's half the problem. Enshitification is something that happens all the time in the training data scraped from various websites, so yes, it's going to randomly toss out ads for shit, even when editing your PR descriptions.

Just a reminder, after 8 years of me telling people that hallucinations mathematically can't be eliminated, they finally admitted it's true. Claims that non LLM approaches can remove them are bogus. This technology was never going to work.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#670

Post by corndoge »

scottyah wrote: post #436
corndoge wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A junior is a person. A tool is a tool. Do you credit your text editor with authorship?

If it contributed significantly to the design and execution, and was a major contributing factor yes. Would you say a reserve parachute saved your life or would you say you saved your own life? What about the maker of the parachute? I'd be thanking the reserve and the people who made it, and credit myself with the small action of slightly moving my hand as much as its worth. Also, text editors would be a better analo…

I suppose that for me the tool rarely contributes to the design and execution. At work and for any project I care about, I prompt once I know what I want, in terms of both function and the shape of the program to do it. If the model gen matches the shape closely enough, I accept, otherwise iterate from there. To me this is authorship.

When I vibe code - which for me, means using very high level prompts and largely not reading the output - then I could see attributing authorship to a model; but then I wonder what the purpose of authorship attribution is to begin with. Is it to tell you who to talk to about the code? Is it personal attestation to quality, or to responsibility? Is it credit? Some combination of these certainly, but AI can hold none except the last, and the last is, to me, rather pointless. Objects don't have feelings and therefore are unaffected by whether credit is given or not; that's purely a human concern.

I suppose the dividing line is fuzzy and perhaps best judged on the basis of the obscenity rule, that is, I know it when I see it.

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