According to a report by 404 Media published on September 28, hundreds of Microsoft contractors have access to sensitive user data. This includes photos containing clear facial information, original AI prompts, and the resulting edited images generated by Copilot.
Journalist Joseph Cox reported that these contractors are not content moderators. Their primary role involves evaluating the quality of AI-generated content based on personal intuition. One contractor noted that faces remain unblurred and many prompts contain sexually suggestive or non-consensual material.
Microsoft's privacy FAQ states that user images are processed to blur faces before being used for AI training. However, this policy does not extend to the manual rating process performed by human contractors. The report identifies Prolific as one of the recruitment agencies providing staff for these tasks.
