Just thinking, could it be that your coworker used Raycast to spin up a codex to review and fix the typo on the PR? And that comment was added by Raycast?
Why is copilot doing this? If they wanted to show ads couldn’t they… just show ads? Or is GitHub such a house of cards at this point that editing pr descriptions is the only way without risking another 9 of downtime?
Are we sure this actually is originating from MS Copilot itself? Technically I believe it would be possible to smuggle ads into PRs using prompt injection too.
Assuming this isn't a hoax, this seems like a huge, probably unintentional, mistake by MS.
If they genuinely implemented something like this, whatever they made from new customers via ads couldn't possibly make up for the loss of good faith with developers and businesses.
I suppose if it's real we'll see more reports soon, and maybe a mea culpa.
That’s a really tasteful Juno Mail footer implementation for a mistake. If the AI self-invented it on a lark, good job, but it reads very strongly like someone intended it.
One feasible scenario could be that they are working on/experimenting with ads, and it was put behind a feature flag, but for whatever reason it was inadvertently ignored
I think they want the free advertisement, like Apple with its “sent from iPhone” addendums. But “sent from iPhone” is sometimes useful, and significantly shorter. If they just left it at “edited with copilot” I think it would be tolerable
I don't think the issue is the sign-off so much as that an existing PR was edited. Claude Code signs off when creating PRs and nobody seems bothered. But it won't edit an existing PR, and it won't sign off if I simply ask it not too (which I've automated). Editing any PR it touches - including one authored by someone else - is downright rude.
Microsoft has had a lot of naming blunders in the past but this has to be their worst. Copilot is currently, a tool to review PRs on github, the new name for windows cortana, the new name for microsoft office, a new version of windows laptop/pc, a plugin for VS code that can use many models, and probably a number of other things. None of these products/features have any relation to each other.
So if someone says they use Copilot that could mean anything from they use Word, to they use Claude in VS Code.
>Microsoft has had a lot of naming blunders in the past but this has to be their worst.
Nah I still rate "Windows App" the Windows App that lets you remotely access Windows Apps. I hate it to death, its like a black hole that sucks all meaning from conversations about it.
Whatever the reason for the inclusion was here, the general problem is much bigger. People / companies / products can influence the direction of AI answers to put them in a better light and to be recommended more often. This isn't limited to just products even.
Obnoxious ads in LLM output was my only 2026 prediction. But I expected OpenAI to get there first and wasn't sure whether the AI companies would first add traditional ad boxes or go straight for blighted responses.
Pull request, which is a request to merge changes in a git repository.
Or (not in this case) public relations , which is an interface with how the public views your product, service or company. In this case, copilot adding advertising into git pull requests is bad public relations for Microsoft, but the article author is referring to pull request as PR
This looks like an ad for only Raycast which does not appear to be affiliated with Microsoft or GitHub at all so blaming Copilot or GitHub here is not justified.
Which does show that this is affiliated with GitHub unlike what I thought. There are no mentions of this string in a code repository on GitHub (including the Raycast copilot extention).
I'm so tired of what initially looks like a perfect normal communication between two people, only to find that some third party has inserted itself like a parasite to exploit and extract human attention. That's why I use our sponsor, nord vpn ...
I'm not a fan of LLM's injecting themselves into PR/commit content. If you use multiple models, basically whichever one is operating git gets all the credit. But, even if you wrote all the code yourself, and just submitted the PR with Claude Code (or whatever) it would attempt to take credit for the changes.
I currently have rules in all of my skill files forbidding models from advertising themselves or taking credit.
Everyone is doing this now. Granted, on Codex / Claude Code, you can disable it, it’s not the default to have it disabled. For some reason on Cursor, they keep shoving the “Made with Cursor” into my PR description despite me disabling attribution, which looks really stupid on a work PR.
I’m so tired of all this BS. Why did this become normal? and how do we not read this as cheap advertising?
Using a LLM to fix a spelling mistake is retardedly lazy.
Presumably they used a free version of the LLM, therefore it is completely understandable that it inserted a snippet of text advertising its use into the output. I mean using a free email provider also adds a line of text to the end of every email advertising the service by default - "Sent from iPhone" etc.
Using a LLM to fix a spelling mistake is retardedly lazy.
If you do it manually, sure.
If you have an agent watching for code changes and automatically opening PRs for small fixes that don't need a human-in-the-loop except for approving the change, it's the opposite of lazy. It eliminately all those tedious 1 point stories and let's the team focus on higher value work that actually needs a person to think about it.
Given time all small changes will be done this way, and eventually there won't be a person reviewing them.
That scenario doesn't require any explicit "summoning", and if there's a human in the loop approving the change, certainly they can fix the typo themself.
(That said I’m rather skeptical of this and would like to see more details of the process that produced this, and proof.)
Edit: Just noticed this official GitHub blog post from last month advertising Raycast, making this story a lot more believable: https://github.blog/changelog/2026-02-17-assign-issues-to-co...
If they genuinely implemented something like this, whatever they made from new customers via ads couldn't possibly make up for the loss of good faith with developers and businesses.
I suppose if it's real we'll see more reports soon, and maybe a mea culpa.
z Quickly spin up Hacker News comments from anywhere on your macOS or Windows machine with a lobotomy.
But it really seems like an own goal if true.
If you look at the positioning, someone has definitely justified that this is benign and a reasonable place to have an ad added in.
Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
I'm reminded of Jay Mohr's legendary take some years back on the creepy Carl's Jr. commercials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJlYRS2Vqkw
Not only unbothered, but genuinely appreciative of the notification.
If you don't want copilot garbage in your PRs, maybe don't use copilot to create or edit them?
So if someone says they use Copilot that could mean anything from they use Word, to they use Claude in VS Code.
Nah I still rate "Windows App" the Windows App that lets you remotely access Windows Apps. I hate it to death, its like a black hole that sucks all meaning from conversations about it.
"It looks like the user wants to add a database, I've gone ahead and implemented the database using today's sponsor: MongoDB"
See you on neural links before “sponsored thoughts”.
Either of these options would still be bad, but here the author suggests that it's just copilot that now just injects ads in its output.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raycast_(software)
Ray casting, however, is different:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_casting
Brought to you by Wendy's.
Or (not in this case) public relations , which is an interface with how the public views your product, service or company. In this case, copilot adding advertising into git pull requests is bad public relations for Microsoft, but the article author is referring to pull request as PR
time is money, save both. try ramp.
Edit: The link in the promotion goes to https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agent...
Which does show that this is affiliated with GitHub unlike what I thought. There are no mentions of this string in a code repository on GitHub (including the Raycast copilot extention).
Sent by my iPhone using tapatalk
I currently have rules in all of my skill files forbidding models from advertising themselves or taking credit.
I’m so tired of all this BS. Why did this become normal? and how do we not read this as cheap advertising?
A little "made with X" in your own draft is one thing. Putting branding into a PR your coworkers have to read is another.
Presumably they used a free version of the LLM, therefore it is completely understandable that it inserted a snippet of text advertising its use into the output. I mean using a free email provider also adds a line of text to the end of every email advertising the service by default - "Sent from iPhone" etc.
If you do it manually, sure.
If you have an agent watching for code changes and automatically opening PRs for small fixes that don't need a human-in-the-loop except for approving the change, it's the opposite of lazy. It eliminately all those tedious 1 point stories and let's the team focus on higher value work that actually needs a person to think about it.
Given time all small changes will be done this way, and eventually there won't be a person reviewing them.
In fact I don't even use Ctrl + F anymore and instead just use Claude for all my searches