Disallow or discourage use of "AI" tools (Christoph Cullmann)

[Benson Muite]

On Thu, May 15, 2025, at 9:28 PM, Alexander Potashev wrote:
> Hi Benson, (everyone,)
>
>> Code contributions made using AI trained on unknown data is problematic.
>
> Is this purely a legal/intellectual property concern?
>

This is a concern.  People have pointed out others.

>
> If we can generalize this concern as
>
>     "a contributor submits code incompatible with the project's license,
> thus breaching the license"
>
> , not only AI may put the project in trouble. It can be at least one of
> these scenarios:
>  1. The code the contributor submitted was generated by AI and originates
> from e.g. another open source project distributed under an incompatible
> license.
>  2. The contributor steals proprietary code and submits it to an open
> source project (no AI involved).
>
> By banning the use of AI, you don't fully solve the legal risk.
>
>

This is true. Banning AI is not a solution.

> On Thu, May 15, 2025 at 7:08 PM Benson Muite <benson_muite at emailplus.org>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Code contributions made using AI trained on unknown data is problematic.
>> KDE does also create a lot of data that could be used to improve KDE. It
>> may be good to see if AI or ML tools could use some of this data to improve
>> KDE in an ethical manner.
>>
>> On Thu, May 15, 2025, at 5:09 PM, Felix Ernst wrote:
>> > Late reply, but I also wanted to mention that I am 100% in support of
>> > any anit-AI messaging and policies we might choose.
>> >
>> > The wording as linked by Akseli in their first post seems like a good
>> > starting point in that regard:
>> >
>> >>Other projects have already done something similar, see for example:
>> https://discourse.gnome.org/t/loupe-no-longer-allows-generative-ai-contributions/27327
>> >
>> > The only use of AI I support needs all its training data to be licenced
>> > in a way that allows use for the AI training e.g. CC0 or WTFPL licence.
>> > This way I don't see ethical issues because the copyright holders have
>> > then given some sort of consenst for this use.
>> >
>> > I wouldn't even mind if we went one step further and actively promoted
>> > e.g. Plasma as "free of AI". This does not need to be fully true, but
>> > this would be more of an activism and marketing angle I would like to
>> > see. There is a good chance though that this would not be a good use of
>> > our time but it would align with KDE Eco IMO. (I know that there are
>> > also great uses of AI, but public messaging needs to be clear and easy
>> > to understand, and there is still enough pro-AI marketing out there to
>> > the point that taking the opposite stance seems sensible to me.)
>> >
>> > Have a nice week!
>> > Felix
>> >
>> >  > Date: Tue, 13 May 2025 09:22:22 +0930
>> >  > From: Justin Zobel <justin at 1707.io>
>> >  >
>> >  > I am 100% for this. Most AI tools just scrape (read: steal) code
>> > from
>> >  > whatever source they can, with no attribution or consideration for
>> > legal
>> >  > rights/copyright.
>> >  >
>> >  > Accepting any AI generated code is a legal risk unless the source of
>> > the
>> >  > code can be verified.
>> >  >
>> >  > I would wager 99.999% of people using AI tools wouldn't know what
>> > the
>> >  > source of the code is, or how it is licensed.
>> >  >
>> >  > On 12/05/2025 22:23, Akseli wrote:
>> >  > > Hi
>> >  > >
>> >  > > There's been a lot of "AI" slop spam to various KDE projects, bug
>> > reports, forums, etc..
>> >  > >
>> >  > > We should take a more public stance on disallowing all this slop.
>> > Lengthy gitlab issues that are just full of nonsense generated by a bot
>> > just take time out of everyones schedules, trying to decipher if its
>> > serious or not.
>> >  > >
>> >  > > Other projects have already done something similar, see for
>> > example:
>> https://discourse.gnome.org/t/loupe-no-longer-allows-generative-ai-contributions/27327
>> >  > >
>> >  > > I don't care if someone uses those tools in their personal
>> > projects, but bringing this slop in to our shared space just frustrates
>> > people and eats resources to go through.
>> >  > >
>> >  > > Can we have somekind of official "please don't AI slop in our
>> > places" sign somewhere?
>> >  > >
>> >  > > Thanks,
>> >  > > - Akseli
>>