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AI Rip-off: Microsoft's Diagram Sparks Outrage
19 Feb
Summary
- Microsoft used an AI-generated diagram with embarrassing typos.
- The diagram appears to be a rip-off of work from 15 years ago.
- The engineer behind the original diagram expressed disappointment.
A software engineer has publicly criticized Microsoft after discovering an AI-generated diagram on a Microsoft Learn website that he claims is a rip-off of his work from 15 years ago. The diagram, intended to explain GitHub's Git flow for software releases, contains several embarrassing typos, such as 'continvoucly morged' and misspelling 'Time' as 'Tim'.
The engineer, Vincent Driessen, explained that his original diagram, created over 15 years prior, used correct language. He expressed surprise and sadness that Microsoft, a large corporation, would use an AI image generator for his work, publish it without credit, and fail to proofread it.
Driessen described the AI-generated image as 'ugly,' 'careless,' 'amateuristic,' and 'lacking any ambition.' He lamented the perceived lack of process and care in taking someone's work, running it through a machine, and releasing it as their own, questioning the purpose beyond content generation.
Microsoft has since removed the diagram from the Learn page. This incident occurs as Microsoft actively promotes AI technologies like its Copilot chatbot, while simultaneously facing user concerns about AI's impact on employment, software bloat, and the proliferation of low-quality AI-generated content.
