Google removed our names from code it took from our open-source project
Google stole open source code without crediting the authors (Artemis/Minitap)
Minitap built mobile-use, an open-source research project for AI agents that interact with phones. When Google released Artemis, the team found identical device code, a word-for-word Hopper agent prompt, and the same WhatsApp example. An earlier Artemis package file listed three Minitap engineers as authors; a force push in August replaced those names with another author. The README does not credit mobile-use. Minitap has contacted Google and opened a public issue asking for attribution.
Finding familiar code in another project is something you expect when you publish your work for people to use. Finding it under Google’s name, without an acknowledgment of where it came from, is harder to take.
- dataflow
> The author history was harder to understand. An earlier package file listed Pierre-Louis Favreau, Jean-Pierre Lo, and Nicolas Dehandschoewercker. The version that replaced it removed all three names and substituted another author. The only change to the files was the author list. GitHub’s activity record shows that the replacement happened through a force push in August, before our investigation this September.
Wow, this looks pretty damning. I can't imagine Google seeing this as worth the risks. Is an innocent explanation possible here?
- neilv
Regardless of whether or not Google is liable, what would be interesting to me is how this happened, the role(s) at Google that were involved, when each knew of the problem, and what each did.
(I'm interested in what this says about current culture.)
- RossBencina
Here's the force pushed pyproject.toml with the new author if anyone cares:
https://github.com/google/artemis/compare/14e02c4c27bc5b3c0d...
+ authors = [
+ { name = "somew1nd", email = "[REDACTED]@outlook.com" },
+ ]
Seems legit