Open source and communities build defenses against AI slop
GitHub added repository settings to control pull request access (49975158). Commenters welcomed it as a way for maintainers to shield themselves from slop PRs, though one pointed out the feature is from February. A thread on adding an AI-generated flag to HN (48886741) cites a new guideline, 'Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans.' It also airs the hard parts: AI detectors are unreliable, voters often can't tell, and stigma pushed one commenter out of Lobsters. Even the 'Rumors of my death' thread (48037336) is about an AI-generated obituary of Cliff Stoll.
The pattern is the same across all three. When producing content costs nothing, the scarce thing is proof that a human cared. Platforms and maintainers are adding gates, and each gate has a false-positive cost.
The hard question nobody answered is how you prove human authorship without punishing people who use AI tools honestly.
So what?
If you run an open community, marketplace or repo, plan your anti-slop controls now, before the flood. If you build AI writing or coding tools, expect your users to be gated out of places they care about, and consider provenance features like the 'slop line' convention.