AI Policy, Disclosure, and Human in the Loop: How Are Contribution Guidelines Adapting to GenAI?
arXiv:2605.16706
The paper empirically examines how open‑source projects on GitHub are creating policies for contributions that involve generative AI, focusing on allowance, disclosure, and human‑in‑the‑loop requirements.
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 AI-assisted contributions, while 22% explicitly discourage AI use. (2) 51% of the AI policies require the disclosure of AI-assisted 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.
Accepted to ICSME 2026