Windows and Xbox publisher Microsoft has significantly ramped up its focus on and use of artificial intelligence (AI) this year, with the firm pushing strongly for the internal use of Copilot in its workflows and prioritizing employees that represent “critical AI talent” — even as tensions between it and partner OpenAI have reportedly risen over time.
It’s not a surprise, then, to see an AI-generated image get used for one of the company’s hiring advertisements. What is surprising, though, is how shockingly and embarrassingly dumb it is.
The ad in question is for the Xbox Graphics department — responsible for engineering drivers and working with developers to ensure high-quality game visuals run smoothly on Xbox hardware. Posted recently on LinkedIn by principal development lead Mike Matsel, it features a smiling woman typing on a computer, the Xbox logo, and bold white “XBOX GRAPHICS IS HIRING” text against an Xbox-green background.
The problem? The code the woman is working on is on the back of the computer’s monitor. In other words, the screen is completely backwards, making the advertisement look completely nonsensical. See for yourself:
It’s an appallingly glaring mistake that’s immediately noticeable at a glance, which makes me wonder how Matsel and anyone else at Microsoft didn’t notice it before publishing this official notice (there are other oddities too, like missing shadows and the right side of the desk vanishing into the void). Evidently, either nobody bothered to give the ad a simple once-over before throwing it online, or nobody cared about the AI’s error enough to fix it or generate a better image.
Neither explanation reflects well on Microsoft’s standards for quality and professionalism. And unsurprisingly, it’s being put through the ringer by industry workers scathingly pointing that out in the post’s comments.
“The audacity to layoff all your dedicated brightest minds to pay for your AI slop, to turn around and pretend like you care about people enough to replace the ones you fired, and using generative AI garbage to advertise it. Fk right off with this dehumanizing mentality,” wrote one of Microsoft’s own senior software engineers (potentially affected by said cuts).
“Trying to imagine what it must be like for thousands of Xbox staff getting laid off, watching the head of graphics posting AI slop to advertise new vacancies, with the monitor the wrong way round,” said another commenter.
“The irony that the head of Xbox Graphics using a AI image and didn’t see the screen was backward,” added a third. “Apply at MS! Getting laid off is RNG.”
Indeed, the post came just a little over a week after Microsoft laid off over 9,000 people across its divisions, raising its 2025 total to over 15,300 employees. The Xbox brand and the developers under its wing were significantly affected, with Microsoft cancelling Rare’s Everwild project and ZeniMax’s new MMO, axing the long-awaited, highly anticipated Perfect Dark reboot, and closing its development studio The Initiative.
In the aftermath of such brutal layoffs, a careless and sloppy post like this one is not only negligent, but also astonishingly insensitive and tone-deaf. And frankly, given that it was published two days ago, I’m surprised it hasn’t been taken down after all the scorching blowback it’s received since then.
Again: perhaps Microsoft just doesn’t care about how a simple LinkedIn ad is perceived. But if I was a software engineer in the current business landscape, watching to see how ethically and responsibly companies were adopting rapidly growing AI technologies? I certainly wouldn’t find posts like these attractive or encouraging.
“Is this seriously how Xbox works nowadays? Laying off thousands, hiring again with crappy AI art. Shame on MS/Xbox,” declared a frustrated reader. And they’re right.
