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Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

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Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#361

Post by maiybe »

overgard wrote: post #355
maiybe wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is fundamentally where we end up disagreeing. Within the timeframe of a single mobile app development cycle, the entire coding infrastructure of the world changed. Our collective day-to-day coding experience has morphed within 15 months. Here, you're making a negative argument, it "can't" be done. Maybe. Historically, correct. I prefer to image what could be done. As insane a statement as it sounds just 15…

As a professional developer that's using these tools professionally and worked on multiple game engines and even written a few of my own... nope. Sorry, just, that's so much hype not grounded in anything. I'm guessing your job is to promote this stuff based on that being your purpose of going to GDC? Also, you're really misunderstanding why people use Godot in the first place. They've always been way behind Unreal En…

> that's so much hype not grounded in anything.

Not grounded in anything? Really, anything? There's no evidence you've seen in the last three years that has had any impact on what you think is possible with AI coding?

I'm not a game dev by trade, I am AI researcher turned AI engineer (not the "AI engineer" of the modern era, like getting ML deployed in prod). That being said, I have tried and failed to make plenty of games over the years. Every mistake in the book. Making my own engine, trying to do 3D game as first approach, making mobile apps 2010, using Unity for personal projects, switching to Godot. I'm not at your level in game dev, but I've seen plenty at scale.

> I'm guessing your job is to promote this stuff based on that being your purpose of going to GDC

I'm not an AI hype maker, I'm a stunned observer. A person who has said "no way" AI will impact coding for the last 10 years. I am watching evidence in front of my very eyes and my workflow and simply adapting to the reality on the ground along with reasonable projection of capabilities into the future (based on velocity and reasonable assumptions). I don't need to convince you of anything, but I'm confident your beliefs won't hold up against the stockpile of evidence gathering now and in the near future.

Since you took a swing and miss on who I am, I'm going to guess that you are reluctant to incorporate these tools into your own workflow (perhaps having cast them off quickly after some frustrated probing) and have a deep-seated skepticism of the tech that doesn't really matter what I say.

Where's my inference coming from? The idea that you've conflated that AI coding by its very nature needs to be buggy and unstable. I wish you luck on holding the line as it slips past us on an exponential curve.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#362

Post by eschaton »

JodieBenitez wrote: post #119
eschaton wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they enforce that contributions aren’t copied and pasted from AGPLv3 or proprietary codebases? The honor system and intuition and occasionally flat out asking people. Do you think sociopaths willing to lie about how they came up with a contribution are really that common?

Let me tell you a story: I use agents at work. Not to add more useless features, not in a let-loose way, not so that I can slack all day but to produce better output. Think performance optimizations, security fixes, better use of underlying frameworks, produce better documentation, get useful hints from the code base, that kind of thing. In a word, to produce objectively better software. that is my honor: giving the…

You should have been fired for cause, because the way you chose to work exposed your employer to substantial liability due to the “copyright laundering” nature of LLMs. But you prioritized feeling good over everything else. You’re a sociopath and you should be treated as one—a bad-faith actor only out for themselves, who cannot be trusted to collaborate within agreed-upon limits because you don’t think rules apply to you.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#363

Post by overgard »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #219
TomasBM wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like this policy would apply pretty well regardless of who/what generated the code.

YES! "No AI" policies that are purely based on technical grounds make no sense to me. Bad PR's are bad PR's regardless of their source. Are we really in a situation where good code that solves a problem won't be merged because the person the person checked the "I used AI" box on the PR? Ban PR's that are too big, don't have a clear purpose, touch too many areas, etc.

It's really a question of how much time you're willing to spend sorting through spam. "No AI" might be a blunt hammer, but the people submitting slop aren't reading guidelines anyway, and it's easier just to reject it early. Frankly, I'm sure if people wanted to sneak in an AI generated code by carefully reviewing it and making sure it's targeted and well tested... I'm sure they could, but those people aren't the problem.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#364

Post by gpm »

maiybe wrote: post #192

A point of wild speculation. This is likely to be the slow decline of Godot. As someone with 2 years of Godot experience (which seems like a lot given their lifespan), the underlying infra isn't strong enough to ward off the many competitors that will embrace AI at the heart of the engine. Ironically, the best engine right now for AI-assisted coding is Godot! It has plain text scene files, and Opus does a half decent…

> Rust libraries like bevy

Notably bevy also bans AI contributions...

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#365

Post by overgard »

basch wrote: post #298
TomasBM wrote: post #7

It's a fair policy. Getting those verbose, AI-authored walls of text is very annoying, especially when you're expected to thoroughly review it. It's like a denial-of-service attack on the human mind. I can only imagine how frustrating this can get in open projects that get a lot of contributions. However, I don't think this will discourage AI-based coding at all. In fact, I see two potential outcomes of these policie…

All these projects should seamlessly run a fork in parallel that accepts AI and has AI for review and approval. Both camps are happy. Basically a play sandbox for contributors to not get jaded. A honeypot to contain the verbosity vomit, while also serving as positive public relations by keeping young contributor morale from starting in the basement. Everyone has been that person once early in their life who is told t…

What's the point of this fork if it's just a landing spot for stuff that's not really wanted? Wouldn't that just be more condescending then telling people what's actually required for a contribution? Besides, the nature of forking is you can just do it yourself anyway. If people love their AI changes they can just make their own fork.

Plus I don't know how you could do this "seamlessly" -- someone has to manage merge conflicts, and as the codebases diverge it's just going to get more and more gnarly. (this is the reason most people don't maintain their own forks in the first place)

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#366

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

danaris wrote: post #356
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should not be weeding out bad PRs regardless of their source! A pull request is a social artifact whose value and meaning is dependent on its author; bad PRs from a human author often mean things such as "I'd like to learn how this works and join your community". So it can be both satisfying and worthwhile to spend your effort on cleaning it up, even if it starts to take as much or even more effort than doing it…

So you can run your project that way. You don't get to dictate that other people run their projects that way. > A pull request is a social artifact whose value and meaning is dependent on its author ... and the project to which it is submitted. SpicyLemonZest is not the sole arbiter of what PRs mean and stand for.

I was explaining why the Godot maintainers have chosen to enact the policy described in the source article, in response to a comment saying that they should not have enacted it. I don't understand why you think I'm dictating or arbitrating anything.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#367

Post by maiybe »

overgard wrote: post #358
maiybe wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI-assisted coding is good for creators. It happens to be good for corporations because it reduces costs, but it's actually much more powerful for creators with imagination. I don't know where that argument comes from. If AI-assisted coding can help corporations make AAA games with 1/10th the resources, then it would stand to reason it also helps indies make AAA with 1/10th the resources? I have never understood this…

You can use AI assisted coding in Godot though with addons and an MCP server. That's completely separate from AI pr's in the engine itself. Also, slight tangent but I'm just going to point out that the new MCP server in Unreal Engine 5.8 totally sucks, so it's not like other engines are that far ahead there. The very first task I gave it was to cache a couple of values in a map, and it couldn't do it because it could…

I have never found an MCP server that really crushed it. Totally agree. I think there's something required at a deeper level of integration to get AI coding working inside of engines. MCP is not it.

Yes, it's true, this is not a ban on AI coding with Godot. I didn't mean to conflate those, whoops. It stands to reason that there may be a small anti-AI perspective taking shape inside of the Godot engine team. This is one sign, but not confirmation of that suspicion.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#368

Post by LordDragonfang »

tayo42 wrote: post #321
the_hoser wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The policy isn't necessary to close the PR. The policy just helps to shut down the ensuing discussion after closing the PR. It helps in quickly dealing with well-meaning onlookers asking for clarification when you block PRs from the account.

Still, your not even entitled to a discussion though.

Whether or not someone is entitled to something has very little bearing on whether someone believes they are entitled to something (and are willing to waste everyone's time to make a stink about it). Having clear rules to point to, even after the fact, is surprisingly effective in mitigating that.

Or, put more bluntly, your belief in what people ought to feel entitled to has no bearing on what they do believe, and policy needs to address the latter, not the former.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#369

Post by overgard »

Mabusto wrote: post #46
ivorius wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is well-capable of fabricating text that looks like an opinion in 2026. This would not help differentiate AI from human authors.

You’re absolutely right - AI is not just capable, it’s on the leading edge. It’s not about vibes, it’s about results. (It’s famously not well capable of sounding human)

It's funny how identifiable AI text is. I usually know within like 10 seconds of watching a youtube video if the script is AI generated and it's a huge turnoff.

Plus the video generation, you basically know from the thumbnail. (Why do so many AI generated videos have a weird unnecessary film grain?!)

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#370

Post by overgard »

jerf wrote: post #263
Mabusto wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re absolutely right - AI is not just capable, it’s on the leading edge. It’s not about vibes, it’s about results. (It’s famously not well capable of sounding human)

"(It’s famously not well capable of sounding human)" Rather than a binary, I prefer to measure the question of "how much text does it take to be reasonably sure that it's an AI?" By that metric, it is getting better at a reasonable pace. People are also getting better at prompting their AIs to write in something other than the default LLM style. If you think you're good at picking up that style, you probably are. But…

I mean, yeah, you can give it style guidelines, but if someone's goal is "mislead people into thinking a person wrote this" then they should really be reevaluating their values.
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