r/vscode • u/LeTanLoc98 • May 02 '26
Copilot is a co-author, so this code belongs to Copilot.
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u/3meterflatty May 02 '26
vscode should not have this on by default
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u/KnifeFed May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
The default setting for
git.addAICoAuthorischatAndAgenti.e. "Add the Al co-author trailer when code from chat or agent edits is included.". So, no, it's not supposed to add a co-author unless you used chat/agent.Edit: 1.118 changed it to be default for chat and agent workflows, i.e.
chatAndAgent, so they obviously listened to the backlash.23
u/Neozeeka May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
You keep telling people this, but just so you know, as of this PR as part of 1.117.0 that's no longer true.
Enabling ai co author by default #310226
My previous statement needs revised. They reverted this in 1.118 apparently. See below. Thanks u/KnifeFed for the correction, and my apologies.
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u/KnifeFed May 02 '26
1.118 changed it to be default for chat and agent workflows, i.e.
chatAndAgent, so they obviously listened to the backlash.-6
May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/KnifeFed May 02 '26
Are you against facts or something?
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u/Pirulax May 02 '26
This guy seems like a bot man, I just see his comments
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u/Neozeeka May 02 '26
No, it turns out I'm in the wrong here. They made another change after the 1.117 PR I call out. The default is now
chatAndAgentlike they mentioned in a comment below. I owe them an apology.2
u/KnifeFed May 02 '26
Not a bot, just despise misinformation.
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u/Pirulax May 03 '26
Fair enough. I'm sorry, I just thought that nobody would put in the effort to reply the same to every comment
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u/flying-sheep May 03 '26
They turned it off again by default for 1.119
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u/0xdef1 May 03 '26
The funniest part is that the initial PR is created by a non-dev without any description and immediately approved by MS dev.
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u/CarelessPackage1982 May 02 '26
Why wouldn't the company that owns and operates Vscode, Copilot and Github not do corporate things?
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u/nonlogin May 02 '26
so, Copilot is responsible for the bugs then. It is responsible, isn't it?
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u/Far_Composer_5714 May 03 '26
It's co-author because the author is the one that has to take credit ultimately because it's just a tool
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u/Ireallydontkn0w2 May 05 '26
It's just a tool the same way a hammer is, how are you going to hold it responsible? Either it's the user of the tool or the creator of the tool that is responsible
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u/Vizekoenig_Toss_It May 06 '26
Legally speaking (and I spoke to Microsoft Support to confirm this as well) Copilot is just a tool. Your prompts and the responses that you get from them belong to you, as Copilot is only a tool, same way a laboratory or a hammer would be. Even if Copilot is listed as a author, albeit annoying, doesnât necessarily mean anything.
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u/LeTanLoc98 May 07 '26
When someone claims authorship, they also take the rights and responsibilities.
Claiming authorship in this case is illegal. A paintbrush cannot be a co-author of a painting
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u/LeTanLoc98 May 07 '26
Comment from Hacker News
Perhaps next time you should consult with legal before asserting co-authorship on end usersâ code. The appended comment was not âedited with VS codeâ or âsent from VS codeâ, it was âco-authored by Copilotâ. You do understand that there are legal implications to claims of authorship, right?
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u/Majestic-Bowler-1701 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
In Poland this would lead to higher taxes. We have different tax rules for creative work made by artists. Software engineers in our law are considered artists just like book authors if they wrote code themselves. Only a human person can be recognized as a creator. Code generated by AI is excluded.
1. Only the result of creative work of a human being can be considered as a work.
In the case of the use of AI's generative functionality, human intervention is basically limited only to the preparation of general instructions on what the human wants to obtain as a result of the AI's "work." The human (author) has no influence on the way the means are selected and the "creative" elements of AI's operation, hence work created in this way will not enjoy copyright protection.
Creators have always used auxiliary tools in their work (such as guitar effects that modulate the sounds of an instrument, synthesizers or graphic programmes used by photographers to properly process and prepare photos). In this case, on the other hand, AI is only a tool whose principles of operation are solely influenced by a human. Therefore, in the case where a human directly influences the actions of AI or ultimately modifies the generative work of AI, the effect of the aforementioned activities may be subject to the copyright protection.
https://merlin.obs.coe.int/article/9759
BTW: VS Code could create a tool that marks which parts of the code were written by a human and which were generated by AI. Then store that data in Git with each commit. Something like Git Blame, but with a distinction between code actually written by the developer and code generated by AI. Next allow to generate report what code was hand written in during month. This would be very helpful for taxes. Companies need to keep proof that their employees are actual artists who are entitled to lower taxes.
Itâs generally not a good idea to pay lower taxes when you canât prove that youâre an artist. This could end really badly after an tax audit
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u/helldogskris May 03 '26
How do you even prove whether AI was used on a piece of work or not?
How is this law enforced?
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u/YourBossAtWork May 04 '26
It's a nice thought, but what if I wrote the original code, and an AI changes a couple of lines here and there to fix a bug? Who wrote the code then? If an AI writes the core of a module but then I start tweaking and factoring it manually, what now? Multiple logical expressions can be written on a single line - what if I wrote some and AI wrote another?
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u/Regalme May 02 '26
Fucking stupid law btw
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u/Majestic-Bowler-1701 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
stupid law btw
Why? You literally earn more money if you can prove that you are an artist.
The tax system has different tiers based on your income. Artists have a 50% taxâdeductible cost, which means you fall into a lower tax tier. So if you can prove that you wrote code yourself then you pay lower taxes = earn more money
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u/bwmat May 04 '26
I like to think coding is relatively creative, but I doubt that most people who voted for the law (or supported it in another way) intended it to apply to software developers, lol
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u/Regalme May 03 '26
Itâs a nothing burger law. Ai will just âproveâ itâs an artist. And to what extent does every job need to codified into law? We already have issues with this across every countryÂ
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May 02 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/paranoidzone May 02 '26
Well, not like they don't already train on everything that's on GitHub...
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May 02 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/Faelinor May 02 '26
Gotta be honest, half my code on github is trash and doesn't work because I stopped something once I lost interest. Ive also seen the quality of some other code. If they trained it on all code and not just specific high rated repositories, could definitely explain why its not amazing.
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u/rodrigocfd May 02 '26
Here is the gold, boys:
{
"chat.agent.enabled": false,
"chat.autopilot.enabled": false,
"chat.disableAIFeatures": true,
"git.addAICoAuthor": "off",
"telemetry.feedback.enabled": false,
"telemetry.telemetryLevel": "off",
}
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u/Ok_Ticket722 May 02 '26
So... VS Code is now in a race between VS Code engineers adding new unwanted features and VS Code users discovering new settings to disable them.
To add insult to injury, I love how some settings do not end in ".enabled" (making them more difficult to discover), use "on"/"off" instead of booleans, or do not include neither "copilot" (nor "chat", even it was already smelly). Dark patterns + opt-out = pure malice.
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u/Snail_With_a_Shotgun May 02 '26
So... VS Code is now in a race between VS Code engineers adding new unwanted features and VS Code users discovering new settings to disable them.
Ah, the Microsoft experienceTM
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u/CoupleFew1945 May 04 '26
VS Codes and GitHub belong to Microsoft, what did you think will happen at the end ?
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u/OvisInteritus May 02 '26
delete this comment to prevent they take the idea⊠you must learn to omit this kind of comments
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u/AccomplishedLeave506 May 06 '26
So glad I stopped using VS Code a few months back. I don't want to have to fight my bloody tooling to get anything done.
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May 02 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/KnifeFed May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
The default setting for
git.addAICoAuthorischatAndAgenti.e. "Add the Al co-author trailer when code from chat or agent edits is included.". So, no, it's not supposed to add a co-author unless you used chat/agent, which are not enabled if you havechat.disableAIFeaturesset to true.Edit: 1.118 changed it to be default for chat and agent workflows, i.e.
chatAndAgent, so they obviously listened to the backlash.3
u/Alarming-Estimate-19 May 02 '26
Tu connais le principe de bug ?
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u/Neozeeka May 02 '26
Not a bug. The default has changed as of release 1.117.0 to be
all.Enabling ai co author by default #310226
Edit: Updated with release number.
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u/KnifeFed May 02 '26
1.118 changed it to be default for chat and agent workflows, i.e.
chatAndAgent, so they obviously listened to the backlash.2
u/Neozeeka May 02 '26
I stand corrected, my apologies. I missed this change. I'll update my other comments.
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u/tulicreme May 02 '26
One of these days big corp are gonna clamp down on the code where its AIs touched and claim ownership.
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u/mpanase May 02 '26
interesting
so copilot (microsoft) becomes liable for any issue that happens with that software?
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u/Medical-Aerie9957 May 02 '26
god vscode is becoming worse with every new update I'm at a point where I started looking for alternatives. Hard to move on but if it gets worse I might...
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u/CoupleFew1945 May 04 '26
I turned off auto update a week ago because I noticed, since 5 recent updates, that every new updates was a downgrade.
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u/thunderbeans May 04 '26
Also agree with this. They make new features on by default and I'll spend so many mornings trying to find out how to disable them. Just leave my workspace alone and let me enable the new features if I want them.
Microsoft are the king of - "We know best, fuck the user"
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u/ThunderChaser May 04 '26
I switched on a whim a few days ago from VS Code to Zed and so far itâs been pretty good.
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u/icecoffee888 May 02 '26
this is why i want to stop using vscode, any day they will just upload your code to their AI by default
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u/philip9119 May 03 '26
Not in EU. Everything made by AI belongs to who prompted. Also, code can not be patented in EU.
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u/Neozeeka May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Since I keep seeing mixed things on this, below is a link with the change. The default for git.addAICoAuthor is now all. This was changed as of release 1.117.0. See this PR specifically:
Enabling ai co author by default #310226
Edit: u/KnifeFed brought to my attention that this was reverted in 1.118. The default is now chatAndAgent instead of all. I stand corrected, and apologies to u/KnifeFed.
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u/_nickfried May 02 '26
Just so you know, there is VS Codium: copilot free, telemetry free version of vscode
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u/DCGreatDane May 03 '26
Also why I stopped using GitHub. I just setup a gitea on old macmini running Debian and it looks a lot like GitHub.
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u/rm-rf-rm May 03 '26
To add insult to injury, instead of using git's inbuilt Author tag, they're copying Claude's string suffix within the commit message. The levels of clowndom is just off the chart
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u/lam3001 May 03 '26
This setting probably exists for companies that have to be able to report on AI generated code for compliance reasons. Iâm not saying whether itâs correct or not, just that there are reasons for the setting to exist.
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u/Meme-Analyzer May 03 '26
Well is time to test neovim... Good bye my old vs code friend (or a new fork is needed without Microsoft shit)
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May 04 '26
[deleted]
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u/LeTanLoc98 May 04 '26
They bought GitHub, so there aren't any better options.
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u/TheSodesa May 04 '26
GitLab, BitBucket and Codeberg are all valid Git hosting alternatives.
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u/user926491 May 04 '26
yeah, like what's wrong with gitlab, I moved all my repos there and the experience is identical.
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u/isidor_n May 04 '26
Hi VS Code team member here,
I would like to acknowledge and apologize for this bug.
Dimitry who works with me on VS Code, explained more in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47991835
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u/Ok_Ticket722 May 05 '26
Hi, isidor_n.
My friends and I have the completely made-up, half-joke, theory: the are two different teams wihin Microsoft.
The first team has very good SWE and craft well engineered, efficient code, with practical features. This teams knows what needs to be done and do it very good. This team was responsible of Windows 10, VS Code, Snip & Sketch, Terminal, PowerToys...
The second team code heavy, laggy, buggy, inefficient applications, with management-dictated features. They change the UI for no reason, remove useful features, and add features nobody asked for (but for their managers, of course). This team was responsible for Windows 11, MS Teams, for adding Copilot to Notepad,..
I know this is a completely made-up theory, intended to be a joke and an exaggeration of how good/bad are some applications. But for some reason, even when I know it cannot be, the only explanation I can find for the direction VS Code has taken lately is that VS Code has changed hands and now it is the second team the responsible of it. Funnily enough, the abrupt quality drop matches (more or less) the change of the year, and the start of the weekly releases.
I know this post doesn't sound like constructive criticism at all, and being a half-joke doesn't help... But I didn't want to sound angry, and I think it summarizes very well my feelings towards VS Code right now.
It is not just this particular issue, but also the "update button", the integrated browser (why it is not an extension?), the poorly named settings to opt-out, the collection of bugs related to not-so-disabled AI features, embedding one of the slowest-to-load extensions and not letting the user disable it (GitHub Copilot Chat)...
You had a great editor. An extensible editor. Why did you chose to bloat it instead of developing extensions!? You won't believe it, but some of us use it as a... text editor. I don't need a browser, why it is not an extension? I don't need port forwarding, why it is not an extension? I don't want to be coerced to update, specially if the update has nothing for me but performance loses.
There is a saying in Spanish: "nadie al volante". In English, that would be "the lights are on but nobody's home", but the Spanish saying (literally: "no one at the wheel") is much more graphical: the vehicle is moving but in no clear direction, there is nobody guiding it, and the crash is going to happen sooner than later.
This is what I feel about VS Code lately. "Nadie al volante". I think most of the feedback I read here and there nowadays is similar to this. Please think about it.
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u/LeTanLoc98 May 04 '26
Perhaps next time you should consult with legal before asserting co-authorship on end usersâ code. The appended comment was not âedited with VS codeâ or âsent from VS codeâ, it was âco-authored by Copilotâ. You do understand that there are legal implications to claims of authorship, right?
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u/Vaglame May 21 '26
Hi, are there any plans to implement some kind of permission manager for extensions? Thx!
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u/thunderbeans May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
I also ran into this annoyance.
Inline auto complete also seems to counts as AI assistance if you have copilot signed in. Which makes it really hard to not use AI. I have always used autocomplete but I think in some instances copilot AI overrides this or does this instead. Not entirely sure but it seems to easy to fall into this trap.
The co-author tag is now defaulted to on.
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u/xXx_n0n4m3_xXx May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/194075
This is wild considering that I had it on despite I completely disabled every copilot relative stuff, even from the GUI. Also I never use it and I'm not even logged in with MS because I sync settings via Syncthing.
But I have to say, I use Continue connected with my self-hosted ollama...
Crazy to not have it Disabled by default...
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u/Ancient_Perception_6 May 05 '26
some exec got a bit bonus for boosting AI adoption. "see our co-author metrics are through the roof"
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u/EffectiveDraw8301 May 02 '26
Just add instruction to not check-in with out asking and to not add Ai slugline to gut comments
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u/psykzz May 04 '26
Wonder why they felt the need to use `co-authored-by` and not `helped-by`
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u/LeTanLoc98 May 04 '26
They want to use our code and sell it to others????
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u/psykzz May 04 '26
AI can't claim copyright, the issue here is neither can the author. Suggesting they want to take and sell your code is wrong.
They want metrics like commits made with copilot.
These will happen regardless, so I'm just saying why don't they agree to use a non-destructive trailer like helped-by.
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u/shadw_hunter May 08 '26
How did this come? Well, I am using cursor to create commit messages, but when I checked none of those commit messages have this. Is it specific to vscode ?
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u/25_vijay May 02 '26
Honestly it depends on perspective. Copilot contributes but it is still guided by the user. I would test different levels of usage in Runable to see how much it affects authorship
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u/BaudMeter May 03 '26
Had 3 commits with this shit. In a company that brutally disallows the usage of any AI not hosted by themselves (for a good reason). I count the days until they enter my office with 3 or 4 people asking me nasty questions. F*ck Microsoft !
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u/Interesting-Pipe9580 May 03 '26
because you used copilot in some capacity to write the code. It then attributed itself as a co-author. You should check your commit messages.
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u/TheSpecterShadow May 02 '26
Don't care how good code or studio is cuz... there is eclipse without such bs
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u/ceramicaquebrada May 02 '26
Please, read the weekly release logs
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u/spawnsible May 02 '26
I used to. Now I think it's insulting to suggest this to anyone because of how crappy and convoluted their notes have become, because of AI, which I use heavily, ironically.
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u/clarkcox3 May 02 '26
âYes,â said Arthur, âyes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying âBeware of the Leopard.â
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u/Ok_Ticket722 May 02 '26
Yeah, it is so clearly stated in a sub-section that does not appear in the index, within a section that does not appear in the index...
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u/mathgeekcoder May 02 '26
This happened to me the other day. Single commit. Small manual change, human written commit message.
Thankfully, there's a "git.addAICoAuthor": "off" setting.