Linus Torvalds rejects AI-tool bans in Linux contribution dispute

Linus Torvalds rejected blanket restrictions on AI tools in an October 13, 2026 Linux kernel mailing-list reply, saying contributors should understand their work regardless of how they produce it. His intervention turned a proposal to remove “Assisted-by” documentation references into a dispute over whether tool choice is a meaningful test of competence.

A documentation patch becomes a standards dispute

The thread began on October 9 with Sasha Levin’s patch titled “[PATCH] docs: remove Assisted-by references.” Its subject was documentation, rather than a proposal to ban AI-generated code. By October 13, the discussion had reached a more basic question: what should Linux ask contributors to demonstrate about the work they submit?

Torvalds was responding to Laurent Pinchart, whose message he quoted: “What this is about is setting our expectations, telling what we want and what we don't want.” Torvalds rejected that framing and called the concept of “don't use AI for X” idiotic. His criticism targeted categorical restrictions, not simply the wording of a disclosure reference.

The compiler-and-editor challenge

To make his objection concrete, Torvalds proposed a deliberately unreasonable alternative: prohibit compilers and require contributors to write kernel code in assembler. Under that hypothetical rule, using a compiler would count against a developer’s competence because it would obscure whether they understood what the machine was doing.

He then applied the same reasoning to writing a commit message, the explanation accompanying a code change. Contributors should not use an editor either, he suggested sarcastically, because deleting typing mistakes would hide evidence of their ability. Both examples challenged the idea that removing assistance is a useful way to establish understanding.

Torvalds’s response was not that contributors could stop exercising judgment. He said he expected people to do their best and understand what they were doing. He also praised people willing to use new tools. The distinction in his argument was between accepting assistance and treating assistance as evidence that the contributor lacks understanding.

But that understanding has very little to do with what tools they use.

Linus Torvalds, Linux kernel mailing list, October 13, 2026

A proposal is not a completed retirement

More importantly, that reply states his position on tool restrictions; it does not announce that the documentation patch has been merged.