Update on "Co-authored-by: Copilot" in commit messages

What happened?

In 1.110, we added a setting to add Copilot as coauthor in commit messages by appending Co-authored-by: Copilot copilot@github.com. The setting git.addAICoAuthor has three different values:

• off - no attribution no matter whether Copilot assisted or not with the code in this commit
• chatAndAgent - add attribution if the commit contains code that was generated using the chat feature
• all - add attribution if the commit contains any kind of AI-generated code (chat, inline completions, NES)

The default value of the setting was off.

In 1.117 (public rollout started 4/22), we changed the setting default to all. There was a bug in the code that was not found in testing that attributed non-Copilot code completions to Copilot. This resulted in commit messages containing Co-authored-by: Copilot copilot@github.com even when the disableAIfeatures setting was turned on. This issue is tracked in #313064.

Because of the bug, we changed the setting value to chatAndAgent in 1.118 (public rollout started 4/29).

You can disable the functionality by explicitly turning the feature off in user settings:
"git.addAICoAuthor": "off".

What is happening now?

1. We reverted the default for the AI attribution feature back to off. We also ensure that the feature is disabled when disableAIFeatures is set to true no matter the value of git.addAICoAuthor. This was done in Change default for git.addAICoAuthor to off #313931. These fixes will be tested and released in 1.119 (public rollout starting 5/6).
2. We are reviewing our test and release processes for gaps to ensure we prevent similar issues in the future.

What will happen to the feature?

Thank you for all your feedback. We'll make/retain the following changes:

1. The attribution is never applied for changes that are not AI-related.
2. Before adding a commit trailer, the user will have to give consent, no matter the default value of the setting.
3. We'll review the attribution message. A better approach might be using the approach of "assisted-by" attribution as described in Add Assisted-by instead of Co-authored-by for AI agents #313962.
4. The same approach would allow us to add model information as tracked in Agent co author | add specific model information to commit #297353.

We will work on these improvements and iterate with the community via issues and discussions on GitHub to make sure the bugs are fixed and concerns are addressed.