{"id":28433,"date":"2026-05-05T19:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T19:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/28433\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T19:21:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T19:21:15","slug":"this-could-cost-people-their-jobs-vs-code-added-copilot-as-co-author-without-permission-or-notice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/28433\/","title":{"rendered":"“This could cost people their jobs”: VS Code added Copilot as co-author without permission or notice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not content with threatening to replace your role at work<\/a> or causing company layoffs<\/a>, AI<\/a> is taking credit for work it did not even generate. Or at least it was until Microsoft Copilot<\/a> got called out.<\/p>\n

Until recently, VS Code had been adding “Co-authored by: Copilot” to Git commits, even if Copilot had not helped at all. The behavior was caused when a pull request<\/a> altered a Git extension to add the text by default.<\/p>\n

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The feature in question is meant to note when Copilot is used to create AI-generated code. It was off by default in March but swapped from off to all on April 16.<\/p>\n

Article continues below <\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

The change resulted in Copilot being added as a co-author when AI was involved in any way, even when AI had not generated code.<\/p>\n

Even if a user had set chat.disableAIFeatures to true, the credit to Copilot was added.<\/p>\n

Dmitriy Vasyura, the reviewer who approved that pull request, shared an apology on Hacker News<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“I am the person who approved this PR and would like to acknowledge and apologize for the mistake of turning this feature on by default without sufficient upfront validation,” said Vasyura.<\/p>\n

They clarified that the move was not made maliciously:<\/p>\n

“There was no ill intent by evil corporation, but rather a desire to support functionality that some customers expect of VS Code w.r.t. AI-generated code. As folks mentioned here – many similar tools do this as well.”<\/p>\n

Based on the email address shared and their GitHub page<\/a>, Vasyura works with or for Microsoft.<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

The feature is now set to off by default once again.<\/p>\n

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\"Github\n<\/p>\n

GitHub was accused of injecting ads into pull requests earlier this year. Now, users have complained that VS Code is wrongly crediting Copilot for generating content. (Image credit: Photo: Chesnot\/Getty Images. Edit: Windows Central.)<\/p>\n

Despite Vasyura’s assurance of no ill intent, many were upset by the change. Copilot being credited incorrectly could cause issues for developers.<\/p>\n

User “PufPufPuf2” explained the risks of the change (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

“My issue with this: if my intention is to never have these “co authored by ” trailers in my commits, this is a sudden breaking change. What’s worse, it is not immediately visible to the user. Now I could look like I use a not-company-approved AI. That’s absolutely unacceptable, this could cost people their jobs.”<\/p>\n

In one comment, Vasyura clarified that the pull request was reverted due to a bug in the feature, not massive backlash over the change. A separate comment by Vasyura confirmed that the bug was caught in testing but shipped anyway.<\/p>\n

Vasyura detailed the situation in a GitHub post<\/a>. Comments replying to that post are critical.<\/p>\n

“Automatically enabling this was bad. Then claiming it was to \u201cfix a bug\u201d is utterly ridiculous,” said martinbean.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019ve seen Microsoft shoehorning Copilot into literally everything it can, so when automatically adding \u201cCo-authored by Copilot\u201d to commits from inside a Microsoft code editor is claimed to be an \u201caccident\u201d, you can understand how people just aren\u2019t going to believe that. At all.”<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Microsoft was accused of injecting ads into GitHub pull requests<\/a>. Microsoft disagreed with the definition of an ad, referring to an insertion as a “coding agent tip.”<\/p>\n

User trust in Microsoft tools is eroding. GitHub<\/a> outages have spiked since Microsoft acquired the platform<\/a> and well-known developers are moving on to other tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This VS Code issue will likely hurt Microsoft’s reputation further.<\/p>\n

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