Microsoft's copilot contractors can access user photos and AI prompts

A report by 404 Media, published on September 28, revealed that hundreds of contractors working for Microsoft can access user-uploaded photos containing clear facial details, along with the original prompts sent to Copilot and AI-generated edits. Journalist Joseph Cox investigated and found that these contractors are not content moderators but are hired to rate AI-generated content quality based on a viewer's intuition. One contractor told 404 Media that faces are never blurred and many prompts contain explicit or non-consensual content. Microsoft's privacy FAQ states that uploaded images are blurred before being used for AI training, but this does not apply to human rating tasks. The report also identified Prolific, a company specializing in recruitment for research and AI feedback, as one of the firms providing these workers.