Microsoft Reverses VS Code AI Attribution After Developer Backlash
Severity: Low (Score: 30.9)
Sources: code.visualstudio.com, Theregister
Summary
Microsoft has rolled back a controversial change in VS Code that automatically added a 'Co-authored-by: Copilot' line to commits, which was intended to credit AI assistance. This change, introduced in March 2026, faced significant backlash from developers who reported that the attribution was added even when Copilot was not used. Many users expressed frustration that their manual commit messages were altered without their consent, leading to concerns about professional workflow integrity. Dmitriy Vasyura, the reviewer who approved the change, acknowledged the oversight and stated the fix would revert the setting to opt-in for AI attribution. The upcoming VS Code 1.119 release will implement this fix. Similar issues have been reported with other AI tools, highlighting a broader concern about AI attribution practices in software development. The incident reflects ongoing debates about AI's role in coding and the importance of accurate authorship representation. Key Points: • Microsoft reverted a change that added AI attribution to commits by default in VS Code. • Developers reported that the attribution was added even when Copilot was not used. • The fix will be included in the upcoming VS Code 1.119 release, changing the setting to opt-in.
Key Entities
- code.visualstudio.com (domain)
- Linux (platform)
- Zig (platform)
- Copilot (platform)
- Anthropic (company)
- OpenAI (company)
- Claude Code (tool)
- Codex (tool)
- Git Extension (tool)
- Google Nano Banana (tool)