No it wasn't. There were many opinions, just as there are amongst artists, including a small number of very loud negative voices.

But I'm pretty sure the reaction of most "geeks" was positive. Geeks generally love new tech, especially when it can improve their workflow.

A very valid negative criticism is that a huge company with a bad track record having ownership of a for-profit tool created by processing the work of millions of people is not good.

However that criticism shouldn't be conflated with criticizing the existence of the tool itself.

Was it? I'd put it at almost all negative reactions to copilot being about its tendency to reproduce chunks of code verbatim in a way that makes it look likely to be copyright infringement. In contrast, my impression is that the art folks are more upset at the being-automated-out-of-a-job angle. Not universally true, of course, but those really are different concerns.