Linux likers and AI dislikers, it’s time to raid the cutlery drawer and fork your favourite distro. Why? Because Linus Torvalds has declared that Linux is not an “anti-AI” project.
Torvalds recently responded to a discussion about Sashiko, an agentic Linux kernel code review system, writing, “I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area where I’m willing to absolutely put my foot down as the top-level maintainer. Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects.” His full response has been preserved via the archive for Linux kernel mailing lists, lore.kernel.org (via The Register).
If users and developers don’t like the project using AI, Torvalds instructs them to either fork their distro “or just walk away”. Torvalds goes on to argue, “AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it’s clearly a useful one. It may not have been that “clearly” even just a year ago, but it’s no longer in question today.”
He also notes that “yes, [AI] can also be a somewhat painful tool, both for maintainer workloads and just from a ‘it keeps finding embarrassing bugs’ standpoint.” But, not dissimilarly to Microsoft and Firefox, he is apparently now welcoming AI as a tool that can help make the maintainer bug-hunt a little less painful.