git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: [PATCH v2] SubmittingPatches: add section about AI

From
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date
Oct 1, 2025, 20:59 UTC
Message-ID
<xmqq4isi1gpm.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To
<20251001140310.527097-1-christian.couder@gmail.com>
Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> writes:
Show 20 quoted lines
> As more and more developer tools use AI, we are facing two main risks
> related to AI generated content:
>
>   - its situation regarding copyright and license is not clear,
>     and:
>
>   - more and more bad quality content could be submitted for review to
>     the mailing list.
>
> To mitigate both risks, let's add an "Use of Artificial Intelligence"
> section to "Documentation/SubmittingPatches" with the goal of
> discouraging its blind use to generate content that is submitted to
> the project, while still allowing us to benefit from its help in some
> innovative, useful and less risky ways.
>
> Helped-by: Rick Sanders <rick@sfconservancy.org>
> Signed-off-by: Christian Couder <chriscool@tuxfamily.org>
>
> ---
> This is inspired by the "AI guidelines" section we already have for

A more important thing to mention is that Rick is a lawyer at SFC helped us to draft the wording used in this one.

Show 17 quoted lines
> +[[ai]]
> +=== Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
> +
> +The Developer's Certificate of Origin requires contributors to certify
> +that they know the origin of their contributions to the project and
> +that they have the right to submit it under the project's license.
> +It's not yet clear that this can be legally satisfied when submitting
> +significant amount of content that has been generated by AI tools.
> +
> +Another issue with AI generated content is that AIs still often
> +hallucinate or just produce bad code, commit messages, documentation
> +or output, even when you point out their mistakes.
> +
> +To avoid these issues, we will reject anything that looks AI
> +generated, that sounds overly formal or bloated, that looks like AI
> +slop, that looks good on the surface but makes no sense, or that
> +senders don’t understand or cannot explain.

A milder way to phrase this would be to jump directly to "we reject what the sender cannot explain when asked about it". "How does this work?" "Why is this a good thing to do?" "Where did it come from?" instead of saying "looks AI generated".

It would sidestep the "who decides if it looks AI generated?" question.
Show 12 quoted lines
> +We strongly recommend using AI tools carefully and responsibly.
> +
> +Contributors would often benefit more from AI by using it to guide and
> +help them step by step towards producing a solution by themselves
> +rather than by asking for a full solution that they would then mostly
> +copy-paste. They can also use AI to help with debugging, or with
> +checking for obvious mistakes, things that can be improved, things
> +that don’t match our style, guidelines or our feedback, before sending
> +it to us.
> +
>  [[git-tools]]
>  === Generate your patch using Git tools out of your commits.
Thanks.
Previous: Christian CouderNext: Christian Couder
Message 14 of 34 in “SubmittingPatches: forbid use of genAI to generate changes”
  1. SubmittingPatches: forbid use of genAI to generate changesJunio C Hamano, Jun 30, 2025
  2. brian m. carlsonJun 30, 2025
  3. Collin FunkJun 30, 2025
  4. Christian CouderJul 1, 2025
  5. Christian CouderJul 1, 2025
  6. Junio C HamanoJul 1, 2025
  7. Junio C HamanoJul 1, 2025
  8. Christian CouderJul 8, 2025
  9. SubmittingPatches: add section about AIChristian Couder, Oct 1, 2025
  10. Chuck WolberOct 1, 2025
  11. brian m. carlsonOct 1, 2025
  12. Ben KnobleOct 2, 2025
  13. Christian CouderOct 3, 2025
  14. Junio C HamanoOct 1, 2025
  15. Christian CouderOct 3, 2025
  16. Junio C HamanoOct 3, 2025
  17. rsbecker@nexbridge.comOct 3, 2025
  18. Christian CouderOct 8, 2025
  19. brian m. carlsonOct 1, 2025
  20. Christian CouderOct 3, 2025
  21. Elijah NewrenOct 3, 2025
  22. brian m. carlsonOct 3, 2025
  23. Junio C HamanoOct 6, 2025
  24. Elijah NewrenOct 8, 2025
  25. Junio C HamanoOct 12, 2025
  26. Christian CouderOct 8, 2025
  27. Junio C HamanoOct 13, 2025
  28. Junio C HamanoOct 23, 2025
  29. Elijah NewrenOct 8, 2025
  30. Christian CouderOct 8, 2025
  31. Michal SuchánekOct 8, 2025
  32. Christian CouderOct 8, 2025
  33. Collin FunkOct 9, 2025
  34. Christian CouderOct 8, 2025

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.