GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

Microsoft has done a 180. Following backlash from developers, GitHub has removed Copilot's ability to stick ads - what it calls "tips" - into any pull request that invokes its name. 

Australian developer Zach Manson noted on Monday that, after a coworker asked Copilot to correct a typo in one of his pull requests, he was surprised to find a message from Copilot in the PR pushing readers to adopt productivity app Raycast. 

"Quickly spin up Copilot coding agents from anywhere on your macOS or Windows machine with Raycast," the note read with a lightning bolt emoji and link to install Raycast.

"Initially I thought there was some kind of training data poisoning or novel prompt injection and the Raycast team was doing some elaborate proof of concept marketing," Manson told The Register in an email. 

But no: Take a look around GitHub and you'll see more than 11,400 ...