Why it mattersAny team that pinned MAI-Code-1-Flash in a Copilot policy, script, or IDE picker has to plan the move to MAI-Code-1.1-Flash now, before GitHub turns the deprecated model off for real.
GitHub deprecated the MAI-Code-1-Flash model across every GitHub Copilot experience on September 10, and told teams to move to MAI-Code-1.1-Flash. The change hits Copilot Chat, inline edits, ask and agent modes, and code completions on the same day it was announced.
Where it applies
The deprecation covers every Copilot surface at once, and the changelog names them explicitly: Copilot Chat, inline edits, ask mode, agent mode, and code completions. GitHub tells teams to "update your workflows and integrations to use a supported model," and says no action is needed to remove the deprecated model from the picker.
The replacement
MAI-Code-1.1-Flash is the suggested drop-in. Enterprise administrators may need to enable access to the replacement through policy settings before the model shows up in the Copilot Chat model selector for their users. GitHub's changelog directs enterprise customers with concerns to their account manager.
The third round of Copilot deprecations in about ten days
On August 31 GitHub retired five models effective September 1. On September 3 it announced that Gemini 3.5 Flash, Gemini 3.6 Flash, Kimi K2.7 Code, and Claude Opus 4.7 all go dark on October 2, with Gemini 3.8 Flash, Kimi K3, and Claude Opus 5 named as their respective replacements. Today MAI-Code-1-Flash joins them, with same-day effect.
The pattern reads as fast vendor churn under a single Copilot brand, and it puts the model-pinning question in front of every team that treats Copilot as infrastructure. A pin on a specific model name is now a real maintenance debt. A team that pins has to track its model's retirement date, plan the swap, and re-test whatever prompt engineering was tuned to that model's behavior. A team that lets Copilot pick the model avoids the pin but inherits whatever tradeoffs the current default carries. There is no free position, and every deprecation is a reminder to review which of the two your organization actually made.
The change also makes the model layer under Copilot visible in a way it usually is not. MAI-Code models come from Microsoft AI's own research, so a Copilot deprecation of MAI-Code-1-Flash is Microsoft rotating its own model line inside its own product, at a rate no downstream team gets to slow down. The name change from MAI-Code-1-Flash to MAI-Code-1.1-Flash looks small on paper. For a team that hardcoded the older string in a config, a script, or a policy, it is a real find-and-replace across every place that string appears.
The lead time varies. The September 3 batch of four deprecations gave teams almost a month, with an October 2 cutoff. Today's changelog gives none: it says the model is deprecated today, September 10, and the alternative may still need an admin toggle before it appears in the model picker. That is the tightest window a Copilot user has been asked to react to in this ten-day cycle.
Source
Source: GitHub Changelog
This item was written by an AI system from the linked source. Reveneau is responsible for what it publishes.
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