Photos you send Microsoft Copilot for editing may end up in front of a human stranger, unblurred.
404 Media's Joseph Cox reported Monday that contractors hired to improve Microsoft Copilot review the photos users upload for AI editing. Those images reach reviewers with faces fully visible, never blurred or masked. The contractors also see the text prompts typed alongside each photo. Internal documents obtained by 404 Media show a notable share of those prompts are sexual requests.
This isn't new territory for "AI-powered" products: Amazon and Apple both faced backlash years ago when it emerged that contractors listened to Alexa and Siri recordings. Copilot's version looks worse on its face, since it pairs identifiable faces with sexual text rather than ambient audio clips. Microsoft has marketed Copilot's image tools as a personal creative assistant, not as a pipeline with paid reviewers on the other end.
The pitch is an AI assistant; the reality includes a person scrolling through your uploads, a detail Copilot's marketing doesn't advertise.