GitHub introduces measures against AI slop – without clearly naming the problem

Many open-source maintainers can sing a song about it: The pull requests are increasing, but the quality of code changes is not necessarily improving.

The reason is obvious: With the help of AI coding tools like Claude Code, people without a computer science background can now submit pull requests, i.e., request code changes within open-source projects. The guardians of the code, the maintainers, are often overwhelmed by this. And while some are already declaring the end of the open-source idea, others celebrate the democratization of software development. For example, OpenClaw developer Peter Steinberger said in an interview that it is in any case a "victory for our society" when someone submits their first pull request – no matter how technically good or bad it is. It would move the open-source world forward if more people become "builders" from "users".

Now, at any rate, GitHub, the world's largest software development platform, has also admitted that there is apparently a need for action. If one reads the current blog post by GitHub's Head of Open Source Strategy, Ashley Wolf, the justifications and contradictions seem to jump right out of the text: After all, GitHub's parent company Microsoft is one of the biggest AI cheerleaders among all tech companies. Therefore, there are nice sentences like this in the blog post: "It's tempting to frame 'low-quality' or 'AI slop' contributions as a unique, new phenomenon. But they're not. Maintainers have always dealt with disruptive background noise."

Even the AI fans at GitHub have to admit problems

Nevertheless, GitHub probably also has to admit that something must happen, after, for example, curl completely discontinued its bug bounty program due to too many AI-generated security reports and projects like Ghostty now only accept pull requests by invitation.

The development platform has introduced several features intended to make life easier for maintainers of open-source projects. These include, among others:

The development platform has introduced several features intended to make life easier for maintainers of open-source projects. These include, among others: ¶

• Pull requests can be restricted at the repository level or deactivated entirely.
• Banners to reduce superfluous comment noise (such as "+1").
• Performance improvements for pull requests (up to 67% faster) and issue navigation.
• Temporary interaction limits for specific users in public repositories.

Soon, it will also be possible to delete pull requests directly via the user interface to remove spam or abusive contributions. All these improvements aim to reduce the effort involved in reviewing contributions.

Furthermore, in collaboration with maintainers, further measures are being discussed, such as criteria-based access rules and improved triage tools that could automatically evaluate contributions based on project guidelines. GitHub emphasizes that these tools are intended to support, not replace, the decision-making authority of maintainers. All restrictions remain optional and configurable so as not to unduly demotivate "well-intentioned first-time contributors."

(jkj)