From: Junio C Hamano Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2025 20:59:17 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] SubmittingPatches: add section about AI Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20251001140310.527097-1-christian.couder@gmail.com> Christian Couder writes: > 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 > Signed-off-by: Christian Couder > > --- > 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. > +[[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. > +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.