KDE for People Initiative Calls for AI Ban in Plasma
A new community of KDE wants the project to adopt a strict no-AI policy for KDE Plasma.
The KDE project has found itself in the middle of a small uproar over the use of AI. So much so, that a new community has risen called KDE for People. The community shares the same stance as KDE Eco, which states, "Given its extremely high energy and water consumption, the increased minimum system requirements driving premature hardware obsolescence, among other very problematic social and political issues, gen AI/LLMs are not compatible with the values and goals of KDE Eco."
For those who don't know, KDE Eco is a community initiative that was launched in 2021 to "measure, optimize, and certify the energy and resource efficiency of Free and Open Source Software."
KDE for People wants nothing short of a ban on generative AI in Plasma and all Plasma components. The project wants the ban to be founded on a pro-people outlook toward community, ethics, and the work that has gone into KDE software for decades. KDE for People also points to other projects that have taken similar stances against AI, such as Zig, elementary OS, and OBS Studio, stating that using AI erodes trust, makes code review more of a challenge, and harms privacy.
It should be noted that the proposed AI policy that was originally issued on invent.kde.org has been taken down.
As to the proposed ban, KDE for People believes the ban should include, "outputs of generative AI tools in code and assets, as well as using it for MR descriptions, issues or translation (e.g., the .po files). Related community spaces should also be considered, to avoid Vibe-Coding, the introduction of AI topics into Akademy and KDE Planet, and more normalization of this practice in the KDE Community."
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