AI-generated contributions are not accepted.
Pull requests, patches, documentation, translations, issues, or other contributions that are substantially generated by generative AI or large language models will not be accepted.
Contributors are expected to understand, author, and take responsibility for the work they submit. Tools such as linters, formatters, autocomplete, spellcheckers, and other non-generative development tools are unaffected by this policy.
https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed#ai-generated-contributions
https://github.com/joinloops/loops-server#ai-generated-contributions
We heard you! We are not accepting any AI or agentic code contributions, and will keep building Pixelfed by hand.
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In case anyone else was also confused by this: this is about code, not content.
You can’t ban a certain kind of content on an open source decentralized platform anyway.
You can, but only on one specific instance :)
Still a big deal
For now…
It’s decentralized platform. Nobody has the capability to impose such ban beyond their own instance.
How would they know though? If I use Claude to make a contribution and tweak some things, it would be impossible to know unless I actively tell them I used Claude when generating my code?
“How would they know if my contribution is actually compatible with their open source license? I could just contribute code from an incompatible license, or proprietary codebase, without telling anyone.” This was supposedly an actual argument against FOSS licenses back in the days. Yeah, you can’t be 100% sure, but: You made your intent clear. And that’s honestly what most people care about. Then all you need to do is do some rudimentary checks for quality and maybe do a quick vibe-check (heh) on the person contributing.
Exactly. Even if it isn’t immediately detectable, once it is you’ve run afoul of the rules twice, so you can get extra punished.
Okey thank you. My question was an actual question, if there was like a “tell” or something! :D
There’s dozens.
Large commits, over documentation, and not being able to answer questions about the OR are good starts usually.
Those aren’t really tells for someone just doing “tweaks” like they said. Or someone using a little “AI” like google search. Etc.
Ofc there will be obvious cases but in general there’s no way to detect how code has been generated - especially since there’s no such thing as “AI” in the first place.
My honest answer?
If someone is putting in the effort to tailor their LLM to produce results like that, I’m actually fine with.
I have yet to see an LLM thats able to do that by default. The only way you get there is have a human so close in the loop, theyre still doing the thinking work, but just not the physical typing. At least as I’ve seen, and I have less of a problem there.
The shelved things I have there are environmental, political, human factors, and stolen IP. Those are still fundamental blockers to me being okay with AI. But from a technical output, I dont have a problem with that limit
Prob banning ppl from running agents that are automatically pushing to github and spamming all day
If you’ve seen a typical GenAI pull request, it’s blatantly obvious. If it has been curated well, sure it’s probably not feasible to know, but “slop” is easy to tell, and the target users have very slop contributions.
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Well yes it is obivous if it is vibecoded usually, but if you use it as a tool you write most of it by hand or have it help out with certain functions etc. I hope you get my point! :D
Presumably this is why it says “substantially generated by generative AI”, a diplomatic way of saying “GenAI slop”. GenAI isn’t necessarily completely off the table, but a very common usage scenario is. Admittedly seems subjective, but it provides a criteria to save maintainers from having to review unreasonable contributions without them having to identify some more concrete specific issue that is likely there, but it’s going to be hard to find.
Also, unless it is very digestable, then I wouldn’t even trust myself to be vigilant enough to catch the real issue even if I looked. It does a good job of looking credible like it should be right, even when it isn’t.
If it’s not possible to know if a contribution is AI and it’s a good contribution, it doesn’t matter much. And if it’s bad there’s no point in discussing if it is AI.
It’s impossible, I’ll never understand why anti ai repos draw such a hard line instead of saying hey we won’t even look at 1000+ LOC PRs or design reworks with no discussion.
Both of those are pretty reasonable policies that will kill most of the fly by AI requests.
Yes, and I do agree with this.
They won’t…
Knowing piefed they were using AI, got called out, and are now “banning” it for the optics.
It would be worse if they actually believed it, but they probably don’t.
Pixelfed not piefed, fyi
well that was quick.
Seems to be the standard.
Public statement: “AI is coming!”
3 days later
Redaction statement: “We heard you!”
Clearly, they were trying it on for size; see if the shit will stick. It’s that or they don’t use the internet or read news about it
did they do a public statement? i thought someone spotted dansup adding it in the log.
Good.
Ooo, I’ve never heard of Loops. I did try Pixelfed but found it way too cumbersome to be usable, at least fo rme.
Good. Instagram is filled with them to the point you can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.
It’s about source code contributions. I’m pretty lazy sometimes about following post links, sometimes I worry about articles full of ads and other nonsense. But to not read the actual content of a relatively short text post is a level of laziness I have not yet achieved.
It was probably wishful thinking, borne of utter desperation to see that change made:-)
Hell yeah!
Too late. Deleated. And once you leave its easy to not go back.
You just staying on instagram then?
I still think it’s odd to ban AI outright, it’s incredibly democratizing for smaller platforms and enables them to keep up with without getting bogged down in the drudgery of bug fixes / testing.
Keep up with who? Developing good software is not a race, unless you’re a corporation.
This. This 1000%.
Software is not a mass-produced commodity that has to be distributed as fast as possible. People already have a limited attention span for the features of already existing software so speed running even more does not create value.
At some point we’re going to have to rekon with the fact that creating, reviewing, and provisioning aren’t the real bottlenecks.
Humans using the software is the bottle neck. Humans trusting the software is the bottleneck. Humans building communities and cultures around specific tools and methodologies is the bottleneck.
At the end of the day you’re user base isn’t going to be “AI” agents. It’s going to be people.
At the end of the day you’re user base isn’t going to be “AI” agents
Unless you’re Nvidia, who would love to sell their GPUs to a captive audience of agents that control all the capital in the economy.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/jensen-huang-says-hes-found-a-brand-new-200b-market-for-nvidia/
:^)
I genuinely question if they’re thinking very far into the future. Billions of agents doing what? We didn’t need a rogue AI to turn us into paper clips; we’re going to do that ourselves. Is he thinking local AI at everyone’s computer? People barely use the features of the machines they have now.
The Colt was “democratizing”, but regardless of how liberally you interpret that (eg.: whoever can make the gun has more power over its distribution), it was at the cost of getting more people killed.
Sometimes, ready access to a technology is not a good thing. Imagine if we all could make nukes.
Imagine if a computer program were a nuke, yall!!! jfc.
Imagine if a computer program could launch the nukes. Or maybe don’t. That’s a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
If you can tell it is AI generated, then it’s going to be more trouble than it is worth.
Note “substantially” AI generated. If you’ve been paying attention to popular open source projects you’ve seen the sort of “contributions” and of course they should be dismissed.
If you have had generally good experience with GenAI, think not of your direct experience, but rather your experience with how others have used it, and that’s more representative of the issues.
Allowing the use of something that is ruining the internet, mental health, the environment, art, politics etc. may demoralize some developers and get a lot of people to dislike and not use your project, something that is way more important for a social media than the speed LLMs allegedly provide
something that is ruining the internet, mental health, the environment, art, politics etc.
Humans?
It’s not humans. It’s the AI!!! They’re taking over!! They’re everywhere! They gonna kil eveyrbody1!!1!
\s
Open source projects that allow those humans to contribute can also demoralize some developers and get a lot of people to dislike and not use the project
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