Microsoft removes AI-generated Git diagram after creator calls it plagiarism

Microsoft published an AI-generated graphic on its Learn portal to explain how GitHub works that unmistakably resembled Vincent Driessen’s 2010 diagram, and the image was removed after he called it out. The page has since been updated, but the original version is still visible on the Internet Archive.

Driessen said he wrote "A successful Git branching model" in 2010, designing the diagram carefully and making the source files available so others could use and modify them. Rather than using those files, the Microsoft image appears to have been run through an AI generator and produced a degraded copy: arrows no longer point cleanly, light‑grey elements became black, and labels were garbled—"continuously merged" became "continvuocly morged", "feature" turned into "featue", and the vertical axis read "Tim." He described the result as "careless, blatantly amateuristic, and lacking any ambition, to put it gently.

microsoft, git, github, ai generated, plagiarism, vincent driessen, branching model, diagram, microsoft learn, internet archive