Linus Torvalds welcomes a healthier model for AI contributions in Linux 7.4

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Linux has absorbed a flood of AI assisted work, and its creator seems fairly relaxed about it. The Register reports that Linus Torvalds has released Linux 7.4-rc1 and said the kernel now has a much healthier model for AI contributions

The merge window brought in almost 20,000 commits, compared with a more usual 15,000 or so. Torvalds said he is much happier with the flood of AI triggered work arriving during the merge window than during the release candidate stabilisation phase, and hopes AI driven fixes are becoming a normal part of development

The release contains many fixes for issues found by AI tools, and more patches are now suggested by AI, although Torvalds noted they often get rewritten. He also pointed out that 7.4 is expected to be the next long term support release, which tends to make a kernel bigger, so the size may not be down to AI alone

About a third of the changes are AMD GPU register offsets and bit masks. Other highlights include support for new AMD, Apple and Google processors, virtual machine security tweaks, support for the Raspberry Pi 10 inch monitor and Snapdragon X2 work

Open source projects have worried about being swamped by low quality AI submissions, so it is encouraging to hear the kernel adapting rather than struggling. Having humans rewrite AI suggestions keeps quality high. Linux remains a good example of how to absorb new tools without losing standards

Should open source projects welcome AI generated patches? And how will AI change software maintenance over the next few years?

Linus Torvalds says Linux kernel is out ofwww.theregister.com