Re: We should require AI disclosure

On 7 July 2026 21:57:08 CEST, Mathieu Pasquet <[email protected]> wrote:
>[..]
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>Hi Ralph,
>
>As someone who mostly reads XEPs and does not have a specific XSF hat, one of the missing angles that matters to me as part of the standard process (as opposed to what matters to me in general, like the absolute awfulness of everything related to "AI" in all possible dimensions of our shared realm), is that I would rather not read slop, and I am probably not alone in that group.

While acknowledging your apparent complete rejection of (the use of) AI technology, how is this angle different from my stated first angle about the quality of the output?

I dislike reading badly written texts of any kind, and have seen plenty. We can hardly control what comes into the Editors inbox. What happens after is up to the XMPP Council and Standards-JIG (here).


>If it is not disclosed and I find myself looking at some LLM-isms in a document supposed to be thoughtfully crafted to describe a common protocol to achieve a worthy goal, it will certainly make me pause and reconsider implementing the specification.

That is fair. But depending on where in the process you step in, if our standards process works as it should, this should have been caught before you get to this point.


>If that becomes commonplace, as it usually happens when there is no specific policy about these tools 

That's quite a statement. How do you come to this assumption? Did you see this happening elsewhere in standards organisations? Here? 


> and assume nothing changes in the distribution of responsibility,

This is not an assumption, it is a given. So far I've seen no suggestion or expectation that we would need to accept AI as the sole author (without a human involved in the submission process).


> then in time I will probably have to reconsider my involvement with this standards body.

Ok.

But again, I do not understand why you are making a distinction between a contribution by a human, and a contribution by a human that uses AI. In either case I expect a certain level of quality and if the output is "slop", then the human driving the AI tools is to blame. Or their own bad writing.

What is your concrete proposal that also addresses my concern?

ralphm
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