In an effort to boost its AI investments, Microsoft has integrated AI tools into just about every part of the company\u2019s operation, whether anyone wants it or not (and they mostly don\u2019t). The result of that push led to a new term for the company\u2019s trashiest AI products: Microslop. Just don\u2019t even think of calling it that in the official Microsoft Copilot Discord server. Now, the pejorative has been banned from use in the community, but Microsoft told Gizmodo this is all part of a crackdown on spam.<\/p>\n
The publication Windows Latest first reported<\/a>\u00a0that when a user tries to send a message containing the term \u201cMicroslop\u201d in the Discord server, they are greeted with an automated moderation response alerting the sender that the content is blocked by the server. That alert also includes a message from the moderators, which reads, \u201cYour message contain phrase that is inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, blocking or banning terms from being used on any online platform is the quickest way to ensure that people try to use those terms as much as possible. To that end, Windows Latest saw a slew of other members of the Copilot Discord server start spamming variations of \u201cMicroslop\u201d to see what would get past the censors. Perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of them managed to get through. Capitalizing letters within the term seemed to work, as did replacing certain letters with different characters. It also spawned new terms like \u201cMicroStop No-Pilot\u201d\u2014which frankly, doesn\u2019t work quite as well, but you gotta respect the effort.<\/p>\n That bit of bypassing the moderation efforts led to the moderators of Microsoft\u2019s Discord going into lockdown mode, restricting access to certain channels and hiding the message history to keep people from seeing the onslaught of insults.<\/p>\n Whether the messages get through or not, the sentiment from Microsoft\u2019s user base seems to have made a mark with the company. In recent weeks, the company has started to acknowledge that its users don\u2019t seem to be enjoying the AI-ification of everything, and is\u00a0reportedly<\/a> planning to scale back its full-force push of Copilot and the still deeply creepy Recall feature<\/a> that screenshots everything a user does, which has become front and center in Windows OS.<\/p>\n But even with that tacit acknowledgement that comes with changing course for future OS updates, Microsoft would still really like users to stop talking about how much they hate the company\u2019s AI, though it blames the whole situation on a concentrated spam campaign, not general user discontent.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Copilot Discord channel has recently been targeted by spammers attempting to disrupt and overwhelm the space with harmful content not related to Copilot,\u201d a spokesperson for Microsoft told Gizmodo. \u201cInitially, this spam consisted of walls of text, so we added temporary filters for select terms to slow this activity. We have since made the decision to temporarily lock down the server while we work to implement stronger safeguards to protect users from this harmful spam and help ensure the server remains a safe, usable space for the community.\u201d<\/p>\n