Re: We should require AI disclosure

Jonas Schäfer <[email protected]> Mon, 11 May 2026 16:14:25 +0200
Newsgroups	gmane.network.jabber.standards-jig
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
Hi list,

(sorry Matthew, I'm going to quote you a little bit out of order, but 
hopefully without disturbing the meaning of your message.)

On Montag, 11. Mai 2026 12:59:36 Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit Matthew Wild 
wrote:
> Due to the evolving relationship between "AI" and the law, I think we
> must require disclosure, at a minimum, regardless of whether Board
> decides to permit such contributions. Having this on record ensures
> there are no nasty surprises down the road, which is the primary
> purpose of the IPR policy in the first place.

If we have sufficient reason to require disclosure for legal reasons (and I 
agree with the thread that we have, due to how the IPR Policy works), then I 
don't see how we can allow AI contributions at the same time.

Suppose that it turns out that in general, AI contributions cannot be handled 
under our IPR Policy. Untangling that mess post-hoc seems like an impossible 
thing to do, especially because:

> [… out of order quote …] especially at the rate such models are being 
> integrated into everyday tools and services — there is simply no way to 
> prove someone did or did not use them.

is likely to cause many contributions to be made with AI assistance, if 
allowed.

> However, similar to the recent
> debate about use of "real names", this is basically unenforceable.
> Drawing clear lines between the extremes of "I only used it for
> grammar checking" and "it wrote the whole document" is practically
> impossible […out of order quote…]

This is true, but by forbidding it/requiring disclosure, the liability 
_should_ (IANAL!) move to the submitter instead of the XSF. Similarly to how 
it works under the current IPR Policy if you attempt to assign copyright of 
something to the XSF where you're not allowed to.

Now we could argue that requiring the assertion of copyright assignment 
already puts the burden on the submitter to ensure that the AI contribution 
can, in fact, be assigned. I'm not sure I would like to rely on this, however.

kind regards,
Jonas

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