Hi Nic,
Thanks a lot for suggesting this. I think this is a good idea and I like
the wording too. Gang's suggestions are useful too.
Best regards
Antoine.
Le 18/01/2026 à 20:14, Nic Crane a écrit :
Hi folks,
I'm just emailing to solicit opinions on adding a page about AI-generated
contributions to the docs. The ASF has its own guidance[1] which is fairly
high-level and is mainly concerned with licensing. However, we are seeing
more AI generated contributions in which the author doesn't seem to have
engaged with the code at all and appears to have no intention of engaging
with review comments, and I feel like it would be beneficial to have
somewhere in the docs to point to if we close the pull request.
Having guidelines also makes it easier to tell whether a contributor has
made any effort to follow them.
I experimented with approaches to being transparent about AI use in my own
PRs and have an example here, where the changes were needed but the subject
matter was a little out of my comfort zone[2] - see resolved comments.
I've made a rough draft[3] of what I think could constitute some
guidelines, but keen to hear what folks think. Happy to hear thoughts on
the wording, whether this belongs in the contributor guide, or if there are
concerns I haven't considered.
Nic
[1] https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html
[2] https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/48634
[3]
We recognise that AI coding assistants are now a regular part of many
developers' workflows and can improve productivity. Thoughtful use of these
tools can be beneficial, but AI-generated PRs can sometimes lead to
undesirable additional maintainer burden. Human-generated mistakes tend to
be easier to spot and reason about, and code review often feels like a
collaborative learning experience that benefits both submitter and
reviewer. When a PR appears to have been generated without much engagement
from the submitter, it can feel like work that the maintainer might as well
have done themselves.
We are not opposed to the use of AI tools in generating PRs, but recommend
the following:
- Only take on a PR if you are able to debug and own the changes yourself
- Make sure that the PR title and body match the style and length of others
in this repo
- Follow coding conventions used in the rest of the codebase
- Be upfront about AI usage and summarise what was AI-generated
- If there are parts you don't fully understand, add inline comments,
explaining what steps you took to verify correctness
- Reference any sources that guided your changes (e.g. "took a similar
approach to #123456")
PR authors are also responsible for disclosing any copyrighted materials in
submitted contributions, as discussed in the ASF generative tooling
guidance: https://www.apache.org/legal/generative-tooling.html
If a PR appears to be AI-generated, and the submitter hasn't engaged with
the output, doesn't respond to review feedback, or hasn't disclosed AI
usage, we may close it without further review.
