Re: on ai generated and code provenance

["Alex Bennée" <alex.bennee@linaro.org>]

Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> writes:

> On Mon, 25 May 2026 at 17:33, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> wrote:
>> On 5/24/26 14:42, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
>> > I propose adopting linux's rules instead:
>> > https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html
>>
>> Replacing QEMU's policy with Linux's would be orthogonal to the topic of
>> the DCO.  Maintainers would still have the option of rejecting
>> AI-assisted patches if they don't believe they can apply their own sign-off.
>>
>> Other projects have taken similar "no AI" policies for different
>> reasons.  Zig has one because they believe AI code would make it harder
>> to retain contributors[3][4]; Rust is working on one that is fairly
>> restrictive[5] (discussion at [6]) and requires previous communications
>> with reviewers about *any* generated PRs[7].  Personally I think QEMU's
>> policy is fine but we should start introducing exceptions, possibly
>> including large contributions with pre-authorization (but not
>> pre-approval) from the maintainer.
>
> If we revisit our AI policy (which we should, I think, in the sense
> that it's been a while and the situation has changed), I want to
> note that although our current policy essentially says "no, because
> we don't want the legal risks", that doesn't imply that "if we
> judge now that the legal risks are acceptable, that was the only
> blocker and so we are now open to AI contributions of all sorts".

I think there are still potential legal risks but in the normal use case
they are pretty small. Prompts to re-factor QEMU code will likely be
fine because the LLM is acting as a fungible editor - if anyone prompted
"implement Rosetta's target code optimisation pass" we should be very
wary of accidental infringement.

> While we were essentially in the "blanket ban" state anyway, there was
> no particular need to have the discussion about other reasons we might
> also want to be restrictive or cautious about AI contributions, but
> those other reasons and viewpoints don't go away automatically with
> the legal one.
>
> I have quite a lot of sympathy with the rationale behind the
> Zig policy, for instance:
>  https://kristoff.it/blog/contributor-poker-and-ai/
> I spend quite a lot of time reviewing patches for things which
> are features I don't necessarily personally care about. I'm
> happy with doing that for other people who are hopefully
> learning and gaining something from the process; I'm much
> less interested in reviewing a mountain of LLM-generated patches.

I agree - I think we need to address the quality expectations expected
of series authored with the help of AI before we open the doors to even
a limited subset of exceptions. Otherwise I think we could see a similar
deluge of patches overloading reviewers the same way the issue tracker
has been recently. 

>
> thanks
> -- PMM

-- 
Alex Bennée
Virtualisation Tech Lead @ Linaro