Simon is a Computer Science BSc graduate who has been writing about technology since 2014, and using Windows machines since 3.1. After working for an indie game studio and acting as the family's go-to technician for all computer issues, he found his passion for writing and decided to use his skill set to write about all things tech.
Since beginning his writing career, he has written for many different publications such as WorldStart, Listverse, and MakeTechEasier. However, after finding his home at MakeUseOf in February 2019, he would eventually move on to its sister site, XDA, to bring the latest and greatest in Windows, Linux, and DIY electronics.
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Summary
- Kernel submissions no longer require the "Assisted-by" LLM disclosure.
- Maintainers deprecated "Assisted-by" after the Prague summit; AI use no longer needs declaration.
- Torvalds calls banning AI "utterly stupid" and insists contributors must understand their code.
There has been a big debate over the use of AI in Linux. We've seen some projects swear off the tech, saying that it's unethical to use it. We've seen some projects adopt it, claiming that it's the new frontier for programming and cannot be ignored. It has gotten to the point where if you use Linux, you're using a system that's a Frankenstein-monster-esque mix of AI submissions and strictly human-written code.
The main man himself, Linus Torvalds, has made his stance very clear in the past few months: AI coding is beneficial, here to stay, and even makes programming fun. Now, the Linux maintainers have ruled that people no longer have to declare their LLM usage, as Torvalds himself calls a ban on AI "utterly stupid."
Submissions to the Linux kernel no longer require LLM generation declarations
It comes after a discussion from the Maintainers Summit
The first part of this story comes via a message sent to the Linux mailing list. It announces one of the major changes decided during the Maintainers Summit on October 8, 2026, in Prague, Czechia, where submissions to the kernel no longer need to use the "Assisted-by" tag:
"The Maintainers Summit reached consensus to deprecate the Assisted-by tag. Remove the documentation requiring it."
The "Assisted-by" tag was required if people used AI-generated content for their Linux kernel submissions. When writing the commit, the developer would write "Assisted-by: LLM [TOOL1] [TOOL2]," replacing the placeholders with their AI of choice. This new ruling by the Maintainers Summit removes that requirement, meaning that people can submit AI-generated code without needing to declare it as such.
Linus Torvalds calls the arguments against AI use "utterly stupid"
Any doubt about his stance on AI has surely been made known now
In some correspondence regarding concern about this new disclosure removal, the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, made his thoughts known. His statements come after someone claims that removal of these disclosures "is setting our expectations, telling what we want and what we don't want." Torvalds calls the issue a "hangup" and compares discussions around banning LLM submissions to a few hypotheticals:
"Here's a new rule just for you: don't use compilers for any of your kernel submissions.
Because if you can't show that you really understand what the machine is actually doing by writing your code in assembler, then I don't want to see your code contribution. You clearly aren't competent if you can't write it that way."
Torvalds then compares an AI ban to getting rid of text editors, as doing so would prove that someone could write a good commit message without making any mistakes.
He then rounds off his argument by asking, "Do you not see how UTTERLY STUPID those kinds of rules would be?" and stating that he simply expects the people working on the Linux kernel to "understand what they are doing." This aligns with his previous arguments for LLM-generated code, where he emphasises that people using AI code still need a solid foundation of knowledge when making use of this new technology.