Recently updated guidelines for the Linux kernel tell us that AI-generated code is now being accepted into the open-source project, provided it is properly reviewed and certified by a human. This means the submitter takes full responsibility for the content – if it’s causing problems, then you may expect some backlash coming your way, and rightfully so.

Programming is one area of artificial intelligence that is continually advancing, and AI code is increasingly commonplace these days. Like with any other use of AI, though, it remains controversial and is something that can waste the time of code reviewers, as we found out recently following complaints from maintainers of the Godot game engine, who labeled some commits “AI slop”.

Guidelines on AI coding assistants for the Linux kernel

AI agents MUST NOT add Signed-off-by tags. Only humans can legally certify the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO). The human submitter is responsible for:

• Reviewing all AI-generated code
• Ensuring compliance with licensing requirements
• Adding their own Signed-off-by tag to certify the DCO
• Taking full responsibility for the contribution

Source: The Linux Kernel documentation

To us, this sounds like common sense. The fact that it is written in black and white just makes it clear. Humans must sign off on the code, and submitters “should include” an Assisted-by tag to clearly identify when AI-generated code is being submitted to the kernel. Attribution guidelines state that the agent name (AI or framework) and model version must be stated within the submission. On top of that, users may want to specify the exact “specialized analysis tools” used for generating the code.

Linux 7.0 has also been released by Linus Torvalds, with help from AI

These changes to the AI code guidelines were spotted not long before the release of Linux 7.0. The new version release is hardly a groundbreaking update in terms of its content, but obviously a notable one as we move on from the previous 6.19 kernel. Linux 7.0 promotes Rust support to stable, introduces performance optimizations, and adds early support for AMD Zen 6 and Intel Nova Lake. It also ships with improved security and a self-healing XFS filesystem.

In any case, in the official release announcement for Linux 7.0, over on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, Linus Torvalds (creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel) also touches on the use of AI tools for contributions. Referring to “lots of small fixes” in the release, he notes that AI tools are being used to identify bugs.

I suspect it’s a lot of AI tool use that will keep finding corner cases for us for a while, so this may be the “new normal” at least for a while. Only time will tell.

Anyway, this last week was a little bit of everything: networking (core and drivers), arch fixes, tooling and selftests, and various random fixes all over the place.

Linus Torvalds, via LKML.org

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Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.