Microsoft Copilot Reviewers Flooded With Sexualized Image Prompts

Human contractors hired to grade Microsoft Copilot's image-editing feature are being flooded with lewd and sexually explicit photo requests, 404 Media reports. Reviewers described upskirt photos, sexualized edits of real women, foot fetish imagery involving cartoon characters, and pro-anorexia content sitting in the queue they were asked to rate.

"Faces are always uncensored, and many of the prompts are sexual in nature and dubiously consensual," one contractor told the outlet. Another said, "I just came across an image set that consisted of eight upskirt photos." A third asked, "Who is writing these prompts and who is deciding that basically generating porn is what Copilot is now focused on?"

The workflow, as the report describes it, has reviewers look at a user's original prompt and uploaded picture alongside two AI-generated edits, then pick the better result. Microsoft's guidance to the contractors leans on gut feel: "Trust your intuition... which one immediately feels like the better edit?"

Microsoft told 404 Media it "uses customer data as described in our terms of use, including to improve our products and enforce our code of conduct." Prolific, identified in the report as at least one of the firms hiring the reviewers, did not respond to a request for comment. The piece puts the scale at "a workforce of at least hundreds of human reviewers." Three of the researchers in our directory circulated the story the day it went up.