- Copilot inserted ads into over 11,000 GitHub pull requests
- The developers were not happy with the way they were being implemented
- GitHub has confirmed that this was a mistake and has no plans to advertise like this.
GitHub has reversed its decision to insert ads for its AI tools into pull requests generated and edited by Copilot following backlash from developers.
Australian developer Zach Manson explained how after a colleague used Copilot to fix a typo in a pull request, the Microsoft-owned platform also inserted promotional messages not only for its own tools, but also for third parties like Recast.
Manson was just one of many developers who complained about this perceived advertising: more than 11,000 pull requests contained similar ads inserted by Copilot without the user’s knowledge or consent.
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GitHub has stopped inserting ads into pull requests
In addition to the unwanted ads, the developers were also unhappy with GitHub’s execution: the ads seemed to be written by the developers, not inserted by AI.
One of GitHub’s later changes included these so-called ‘tips’ in any pull request that mentioned Copilot, but previously, they were only inserted when Copilot created pull requests.
Manson cited a separate comment from Cory Doctorow about TikTok’s demise: “This is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to recover all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”
GitHub has since admitted that it made a “wrong decision” and subsequently disabled these hints in pull requests.
“GitHub does not include and does not plan to include ads on the platform,” VP of Developer Relations Martin Woodward has since explained.
“We recently identified a programming logic issue in the GitHub Copilot coding agent that caused a ‘product tip’, including a third-party suggestion, to incorrectly appear in a pull request comment.
“Our goal was to share new ways to use the Copilot encoding agent, and in this case, we highlighted our integration with Raycast as part of a larger set of product tips… We have removed Copilot agent tips from all pull requests in the future.”
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