COSMIC Bans AI-Generated Contributions as GNOME Debates AI Bug Reports

Summary

System76 has updated the COSMIC desktop contribution rules to require contributors to certify that pull requests contain no LLM-generated code, comments, documentation, or descriptions. The project still permits using AI for learning and bug discovery, but not for material submitted for inclusion. Some GNOME projects have similar restrictions: GNOME Calendar bans contributions generated by language models and chatbots, while GNOME Extensions permits learning aids and code completion but rejects AI-generated extensions. The article places the debate in the context of COSMIC's newer Rust-and-Iced, Wayland-only desktop and GNOME's much larger codebase, much of which uses memory-unsafe C, C++, or Vala. GNOME developer Michael Catanzaro argues that the project should accept AI-generated bug reports because automated tools are finding large numbers of flaws, and he has previously opposed banning AI-assisted issue reports. He also cites the difficulty of writing secure code in unsafe languages and notes that GNOME shortened its security issue disclosure deadline from 90 days to 30 days. The article identifies a possible progression from AI-generated reports to AI-assisted triage and fixes, while noting that broader acceptance would be controversial, as it already is in KDE; Debian and the Linux kernel allow AI-assisted contributions.