AI and ML<\/p>\n
‘We can\u2019t trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it,’ say maintainers who previously called the flood of vibe-coded pull requests ‘demoralizing’<\/p>\n
Vibe coders apparently don’t understand what their AI servants write – at least that\u2019s what the team behind open-source game engine Godot seems to be implying with a new policy that cracks down on AI-generated contributions.<\/p>\n
The Godot team announced<\/a> on Tuesday that they were in the process of rewriting their contribution policy to prohibit almost all use of AI from contributors, citing an overwhelming number of pull requests that have poured in, many of which appear to be AI-generated. Nor, the maintainers suggested, can many heavy AI users be relied on to respond meaningfully to review feedback.<\/p>\n \u201cAI cannot take responsibility, and we can\u2019t trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it,\u201d the Godot maintainers said in their announcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ouch.\u00a0<\/p>\n The maintainers described AI pull requests as \u201cdemoralizing\u201d for the Godot team, echoing<\/a> comments made earlier this year when maintainer R\u00e9mi Verschelde said AI pull requests were increasingly draining and demoralizing wastes of time. AI PRs, one game studio that uses Godot noted earlier this year, are largely garbage, come from users who don\u2019t understand what they\u2019re proposing, and are largely \u201ca total shitshow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Godot team said that it now recognizes the problem isn\u2019t going away, so it\u2019s time to do something about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAccordingly, we are in the process of updating our contribution policies, including adding a stricter policy on AI contributions,\u201d they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n For starters, new contributors (defined as anyone with three or fewer merged pull requests) will be required to get explicit permission from maintainers if they want to submit new features or significant refactoring to Godot’s codebase. This, the team said, is a bid to exclude vibe coders and AI agents and nurture a group of contributors who understand the Godot codebase and are willing to communicate with the team to learn more about it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n On that note, contribution discussions will be required to remain human-to-human, too: No AI agents or bots clogging up the comms channels, unless they’re being used to translate between languages.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to ensure that people who choose to review PRs feel their time is well spent,\u201d the Godot maintainers explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n As for AI code itself, any autonomous agent-authored contributions or vibe-coded garbage will continue to result in an auto-ban from the team\u2019s GitHub repo, and the team is extending that ban on AI code to include a prohibition on the use of AI to generate any substantial piece of code.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAI assistance should be limited to menial things (like code completion, regex, or find and replace),\u201d the team explained. \u201cIf you do use AI in some capacity to author code, you must disclose it in the PR discussion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The policy has yet to be formally amended, and the Godot maintainers didn\u2019t say when exactly they\u2019d release the update. Needless to say, vibe coders and AI agents aren\u2019t welcome even now, so don\u2019t push your luck.\u00a0<\/p>\n Vibe coding has shown other signs of falling out of favor lately as horror stories about deleted databases<\/a> and wiped drives<\/a> continue to pile up. Just last week, the chairman of IT consulting service Infosys predicted that vibe coding wasn\u2019t something professionals should be worried about as there\u2019s more to writing good software than coding.\u00a0<\/p>\n