Microsoft's AI-Generated Git Diagram Sparks Controversy Over Attribution and Quality

When Vincent Driessen published his Git branching model in 2010, he created more than just a blog post—he built a visual language that would become the standard for understanding Git workflows. The diagram he designed in Apple Keynote, with its carefully chosen colors, precise curves, and thoughtful layout, spread across the internet like wildfire. It appeared in books, conference talks, team wikis, and countless YouTube tutorials. Driessen never minded the widespread adoption; that was the whole point of sharing knowledge openly.

But what happened next caught him completely off guard.

A few days ago, people started tagging me on Bluesky and Hacker News about a diagram on Microsoft's Learn portal. It looked... familiar.

In 2010, I wrote A successful Git branching model and created a diagram to go with it. I designed that diagram in Apple Keynote, at the time obsessing over the colors, the curves, and the layout until it clearly communicated how branches relate to each other over time. I also published the source file so others could build on it.

That diagram has since spread everywhere: in books, talks, blog posts, team wikis, and YouTube videos. I never minded. That was the whole point: sharing knowledge and letting the internet take it by storm!

What I did not expect was for Microsoft, a trillion-dollar company, some 15+ years later, to apparently run it through an AI image generator and publish the result on their official Learn portal, without any credit or link back to the original.

The AI rip-off was not just ugly. It was careless, blatantly amateuristic, and lacking any ambition, to put it gently. Microsoft unworthy. The carefully crafted visual language and layout of the original, the branch colors, the lane design, the dot and bubble alignment that made the original so readable—all of it had been muddled into a laughable form. Proper AI slop.

Arrows missing and pointing in the wrong direction, and the obvious "continvoucly morged" text quickly gave it away as a cheap AI artifact. It had the rough shape of my diagram though. Enough actually so that people recognized the original in it and started calling Microsoft out on it and reaching out to me.

That so many people were upset about this was really nice, honestly. That, and "continvoucly morged" was a very fun meme—thank you, internet! 😄

Other than that, I find this whole thing mostly very saddening. Not because some company used my diagram. As I said, it's been everywhere for 15 years and I've always been fine with that. What's dispiriting is the (lack of) process and care: take someone's carefully crafted work, run it through a machine to wash off the fingerprints, and ship it as your own. This isn't a case of being inspired by something and building on it. It's the opposite of that. It's taking something that worked and making it worse. Is there even a goal here beyond "generating content"?

What's slightly worrying me is that this time around, the diagram was both well-known enough and obviously AI-slop-y enough that it was easy to spot as plagiarism. But we all know there will just be more and more content like this that isn't so well-known or soon will get mutated or disguised in more advanced ways that this plagiarism no longer will be recognizable as such.

I don't need much here. A simple link back and attribution to the original article would be a good start. I would also be interested in understanding how this Learn page at Microsoft came to be, what the goals were here, and what the process has been that led to the creation of this ugly asset, and how there seemingly has not been any form of proof-reading for a document used as a learning resource by many developers.

Till next 'tim'.

Other posts on this blog Why .every() on an empty list is true Git power tools for daily use An intro to decoders Beautiful code A successful Git branching model

If you want to get in touch, I'm @nvie.com on Bluesky.

The incident raises serious questions about how large tech companies are approaching content creation in the AI era. When Microsoft, with its vast resources and talented design teams, opts to use AI to recreate existing work rather than either creating original content or properly attributing existing resources, it signals a troubling shift in how knowledge is being produced and shared.

The "continvoucly morged" typo became the internet's rallying cry, but the real issue runs deeper than a simple spelling error. It's about the erosion of attribution, the devaluation of craft, and the willingness to ship subpar content simply because it can be generated quickly. For a company that produces educational materials used by millions of developers worldwide, this approach undermines trust and quality.

As AI-generated content becomes increasingly common, the challenge isn't just spotting the obvious failures—it's ensuring that the systems and processes in place value human creativity, proper attribution, and the kind of careful craftsmanship that made Driessen's original diagram so effective in the first place.