Specimen · catalogued monster

The Copilot Changeling

Work that looks right until someone checks it

Swapped into the team overnight, it looks exactly like your best analyst's work and finishes everything twice as fast. Only under a careful light do you notice the stitching, and by then it has already been signed off.

Symptoms

• AI-written code, SQL or reports approved at a glance
• Subtle errors surface weeks later
• Reviewers can't keep up with the volume
• Nobody knows which work was AI-generated
• Junior skills eroding

Overheard in the corridor

• “It looked fine, so I shipped it.”
• “Copilot wrote that bit.”
• “The report reads beautifully. The numbers are wrong.”
• “We're producing twice as much and checking half as much.”