AI Coding Tools Are Flooding Open Source Projects With Junk
Major open source projects like VLC and Blender report declining submission quality as AI lowers the barrier to contributing code.
Open source is drowning in slop. Projects like VLC and Blender are reporting a noticeable drop in the average quality of code submissions, and the likely culprit is the explosion of AI coding tools.
The logic seems straightforward. AI assistants make writing code dirt cheap and absurdly easy. That means more people can generate and submit code — including people who don't fully understand what they're submitting.
The result? Maintainers now spend more time sifting through low-quality contributions. The barrier to entry has been lowered, but the barrier to writing good code hasn't budged.
It's a brutal irony. The same AI tools promised to supercharge software development are actively creating more work for the volunteers who keep critical open source infrastructure alive. Cheap code isn't free — someone still has to review it.