Human contractors hired to improve Microsoft’s Copilot see the photos users upload for AI editing, with faces uncensored, Joseph Cox reported for 404 Media on Monday. They also see the prompts users type, and many of those requests are sexual, according to internal documents the outlet obtained.
“Faces are always uncensored, and many of the prompts are sexual in nature and dubiously consensual,” one person who works on the prompts told 404 Media.
The documents include instruction guides, real Copilot prompts and pictures, and posts from an internal message board for contractors. TNW has not seen them.
What the reviewers see
In each task, a contractor sees the user’s original prompt, the uploaded picture and two edits generated by Copilot. The contractor picks the better edit. They judge whether it follows the instructions, keeps the rest of the image unchanged, avoids distortions and looks good overall.
The contractors are not there to flag offensive or harmful content, 404 Media reported. They are paid to rate the quality of Copilot’s output, including when the request is sexual. The instructions ask them to trust their instincts.
“Your gut reaction as a human viewer matters,” the instructions read.
Contractors described requests to shorten women’s skirts, enlarge their breasts or put people into sexual positions. One reported a set of eight upskirt photos and asked for an unsafe-content flag on the task. Others said they had seen pro-anorexia content. One reported a prompt that seemed designed to create a suggestive image of a group of young girls.
“Who is writing these prompts and who is deciding that basically generating porn is what Copilot is now focused on?” one contractor wrote on the board.
At least one company that hires the contractors is Prolific, 404 Media reported. Prolific did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment. Microsoft pointed to its terms.
“Microsoft uses customer data as described in our terms of use, including to improve our products and enforce our code of conduct,” a Microsoft spokesperson told 404 Media.
Copilot is not alone
404 Media reported earlier this month that OpenAI contractors also read real ChatGPT conversations. The Copilot documents show that human review extends to the photos users upload, 404 Media reported.
Microsoft launched a new Copilot app last week, with coding tools and an always-on agent called Autopilot. Jacob Andreou, the executive vice president who runs Copilot, spoke to Business Insider on Monday. He said the AI risk Microsoft thinks about most is “diffusion”, or spreading AI widely across the economy.