AI cuts coding time, but it's also filling open source's inbox with crap

Generative AI is saving open source developers time while giving maintainers more rubbish to sift through, according to a Linux Foundation survey.

Respondents estimated that a quarter of incoming pull requests – proposed code changes – were low-quality "AI slop."

Open source projects have spent the past year grappling with AI-generated contributions, useful vulnerability discoveries, false positives, and duplicate reports. Linus Torvalds has warmed to the tools, while remaining critical of low-quality submissions.

The foundation argues that projects need clearer policies and better tools to handle the influx.

Almost three-quarters (71 percent) of maintainers reckon GenAI has lowered the barriers to contributing to open source, but just over half (53 percent) disagree that the technology has improved community trust. Respondents estimated that AI cut code-authoring time by 52 percent on average. But for highly complex tasks, 21 percent reported taking longer.

Then there is governance. Only 35 percent of projects have a formal policy permitting GenAI use, while 32 percent …