Re: [PATCH 1/4] docs/devel: relax policy on AI-generated contributions

["Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2026 at 06:16:12PM +0200, Kevin Wolf wrote:
> Am 21.09.2026 um 15:20 hat Daniel P. Berrangé geschrieben:
> > On Mon, Sep 21, 2026 at 09:52:48AM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> > > +.. note:: **Use of AI does not remove the need for authors to comply
> > > +          with all other requirements for contribution.**  In particular,
> > > +          the ``Signed-off-by`` label in a patch submission is a statement
> > > +          that the author takes responsibility for the entire contents of
> > > +          the patch, certifying that their patch submission is made in
> > > +          accordance with the rules of the :ref:`Developer's Certificate of
> > > +          Origin (DCO) <dco>`.
> > > +
> > > +          Since a submitter cannot audit LLM output against its training
> > > +          data, the DCO is paired with :ref:`metadata in the commit message
> > > +          <ai-used-for>` about AI-generated parts.  The DCO still certifies
> > > +          that the contributor has the legal right to submit code in general.
> > 
> > I'm not a fan of this second paragraph, as that feels like it is undermining
> > the DCO. That first sentence in particular is somewhat saying that the
> > contributor does not have to think about plagarism and thed project is ok
> > with that, and also implying that the DCO doesn't apply to the LLM output.
> > This is both not OK in its implication of the project accepting some
> > liability, and then also contradicted by the next sentence.
> > 
> > IMHO this paragraph should just be removed.  The first paragraph clearly
> > states the DCO applies to the submission as a whole, and leaves all liability
> > for infringement on the contributor.
> 
> I don't think making this the individual contributor's problem is great.
> It's rather unfriendly towards contributors to expect them to certify
> something that we all know they can't honestly certify.
> 
> Our current AI policy was built on the assertion that it's impossible to
> sign the DCO for AI output, and I think that's still right. A developer
> can't certify the origin of something when they don't really know where
> it comes from.
> 
> If we decide that we don't care as much about the legal risks any more
> and that we're willing to accept them to some extent, that should be
> explicitly reflected in the policy.
> 
> It seems to me that the cleanest way to do it is to exempt correctly
> advertised (with 'AI-used-for:') AI output from the DCO requirement and
> instead add to the 'AI-used-for:' definition some relaxed version of it,
> e.g. "I have reviewed the contribution for potential licensing issues
> and haven't found a reason to doubt that I have the rights to submit
> this AI generated content under the open source license indicated in the
> file". This is something that could realistically be certified by
> contributors in good faith and also isn't just "anything goes", but of
> course it still is weaker than the DCO.
> 
> If we're not willing to take the legal risk from this, we should
> probably leave the current AI policy unchanged instead of telling
> contributors that they have to work in a legal grey area.
> 
> Kevin

Which risk precisely? That a judge will close all LLMs overnight
declaring their output a derivative of the internet and so illegal to
use? Please.

But just like "AI" does not mean "illegal" it does not mean "legal".

For example, if I give an LLM a chunk of code and say "adopt this to qemu" then
an argument can be made that it is a derivative of the code I supplied.

Whether to give an LLM web access so it can pull in random bits of code
and create derivatives of that is entirely under developer's control.

Whether AI output is a derivative of LLM weights is also an open
question, mitigated by the fact that many LLM vendors will assign
copyright to their users. Whether to use an LLM where that is the case
is also under developer's control.

I'm not sure why we need to get into so much detail, though.

-- 
MST