Moderators of Reddit's r/opensource community posted new submission rules Saturday evening that bar projects that use, are made by, or are intended for artificial intelligence, The Verge reported¹.

The Verge quoted the moderators as saying, "If your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it's not welcome on r/opensource"¹. The post also said today's AI is "incongruent to this Open Source community," according to the outlet¹.

The rules set off a large comment-thread dispute and prompted creation of a rival subreddit, r/trueopensource, The Verge said¹. Moderator Wolvereness told commenters there was room for selective enforcement, including software that incidentally has accessibility features that use AI, such as automatic captioning, the report said¹.

That explanation did not stop complaints that the rules are too broad, misguided, or vague, The Verge reported¹. Many commenters noted that the Linux kernel now contains some AI-generated code, so projects that use it could be banned under a strict reading, according to the outlet¹.

The AI ban is not the only change¹. Submitted projects must be at least one year old, actively maintained, and have multiple contributors, which would bar solo developers with new projects from seeking help, The Verge said¹. Moderators also said they can no longer field requests asking for maintainers or contributors¹.

The same post told people who do not speak English to find a different community, The Verge reported¹. Moderators said they cannot distinguish AI-written text from AI-translated text, and that non-English speakers cannot verify a translation themselves¹.

The Verge linked the original Reddit thread titled "Your tokens aren't valuable: no more AI"¹. Reddit's company response was not in the report¹.

Sources

1. The Verger/opensource just banned AI, non-English speakers, and more9:25 AM

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