AI Policy, Disclosure, and Human in the Loop: How Are Contribution Guidelines Adapting to GenAI?

2026-05-15

AI Summary

The rise of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) poses novel challenges to open-source project governance, as most existing projects lack explicit policies addressing AI-assisted contributions. This study presents the first large-scale empirical analysis of 1,000 popular GitHub repositories, systematically examining community practices regarding the permissibility of GenAI contributions, requirements for disclosure, and emphasis on human involvement through repository crawling, policy text analysis, and categorical statistics. The findings reveal that 78% of projects permit GenAI contributions, 51% mandate disclosure, and 74% stress human review, indicating an overall openness toward GenAI while underscoring transparency and human oversight as critical governance mechanisms. These results provide an empirical foundation and practical guidance for governing AI use in open-source software development.

Abstract

Generative AI (GenAI) has recently transformed software development. Due to the ease of generating code, open source projects are experiencing a growth in contributions. To address the rise of GenAI, open source projects have begun implementing policies for AI usage in contributions. However, the extent to which open source specifies whether AI-assisted contributions are allowed or prohibited, along with the best practices for contributors, remains unclear. This paper provides an initial empirical study to explore how open source projects are adapting to GenAI contributions. We analyzed 1,000 popular GitHub repositories and identified 118 AI policies for contributors. Our results show that (1) 78% of the AI policies allow contributions generated with GenAI, while 22% explicitly discourage their use; (2) 51% of the AI policies require the disclosure of AI-generated contributions; and (3) 74% of the AI policies require a human in the loop during contribution. Overall, we find that the majority of the analyzed AI policies are positive regarding the usage of GenAI. However, AI disclosure and human in the loop are fundamental in the contribution process. Finally, we conclude by discussing implications for developers and researchers.

Problem

• Generative AI
• AI Policy
• Open Source
• Contribution Guidelines
• Human in the Loop

Innovation

• Generative AI
• AI policy
• open source contribution
• AI disclosure
• human in the loop