WTF?! Microsoft's GitHub is rolling back a controversial update after developers discovered that its AI assistant, Copilot, was quietly inserting promotional messages into user-generated pull requests, effectively turning collaborative coding spaces into ad placements. The issue came to light when Australian developer Zach Manson spotted an unexpected message embedded in one of his GitHub pull requests. A coworker had used Copilot to fix a minor typo, but when Manson reviewed the change, he found that the AI had added a line promoting a third-party productivity app, Raycast.
"Quickly spin up Copilot coding agents from anywhere on your macOS or Windows machine with Raycast," the note said, accompanied by a lightning bolt emoji and a link to install the app.
Manson initially suspected something more alarming – that the codebase or Copilot's training data might have been compromised. He told The Register by email that, at first, he thought the strange message might have been caused by corrupted training data, a prompt injection experiment, or even a marketing stunt orchestrated by the Raycast team to demonstrate a concept.
Further investigation revealed it wasn't an isolated glitch. A search across GitHub uncovered more than 11,000 pull requests containing nearly identical messages, apparently inserted by Copilot. Additional code searches found similar tips promoting other tools – again, all automatically added by the AI.
What troubled Manson most wasn't just the promotional tone but the fact that Copilot had modified someone else's content without consent. "I wasn't even aware that the GitHub Copilot Review integration had the ability to edit other users' descriptions and comments," he said. "I can't think of a valid use case for that ability."
– Martin Woodward (@martinwoodward) March 30, 2026
By Monday morning, the episode had drawn attention from Microsoft watchers at Neowin, amplifying developer frustration. Within hours, GitHub executives began rolling back the feature, acknowledging that the system's behavior had crossed a line.
GitHub's vice president of developer relations, Martin Woodward, explained on X that Copilot inserting "tips" into its own pull requests wasn't new. What was new – and problematic – was allowing Copilot to comment on or alter pull requests it didn't originate. "[When] we added the ability to have Copilot work on any PR by mentioning it, the behavior became icky," Woodward said.
Tim Rogers, Copilot's principal product manager, later clarified that the tips were intended to help developers learn new ways to use the agent in their workflow. However, after seeing the backlash, he conceded that the feature had overstepped. "On reflection," Rogers wrote, letting Copilot make changes to pull requests written by humans "was the wrong judgment call."
He added that GitHub has now disabled these tips in pull requests created by or touched by Copilot, "so you won't see this happen again."