Microsoft has come under fire after it was discovered that Visual Studio Code was automatically adding a “Co-Authored by Copilot” line to Git commits — even when developers had turned off AI features. The change, pushed through by a Microsoft product manager and merged without description by a principal engineer, sparked backlash on GitHub and Hacker News.
Dmitriy Vasyura, the Microsoft developer behind the move, acknowledged the error, stating the feature should not have run with AI disabled and should not have tagged commits as AI-generated when no AI was involved. He plans to revert the default setting in version 1.119.
Critics suspect the move was an attempt to inflate Copilot usage statistics. There are also concerns that the hidden line could create legal issues around copyright and conflict with strict AI policies at companies. The GitHub discussion has since been locked due to spam.