I think the people who are relying upon AI the most, might not contribute to OSS anyway. I can certainly say I am in that boat because I do not have software development skills and I do not want to learn how to do it. However I am very much using AI to write alternatives to some software I use like Kodi, because I can have something bespoke to my needs and perform "better" in terms of metrics that I care about, which may not align with metrics the contributors care about.
Have you tried making a skin for Kodi? Awful experience, poorly documented, and something only a handful of the community can do. They tend to perform poorly because of an over dependence on python plugins, have many foot guns, and can feel sluggish and unresponsive. But I can say make me a media player that looks like Netfix and pulls trending from trakt, and in one shot have something working on Android TV that performs far better for me.
There maybe arguments that AI couldn't have done that without OSS like Kodi to train on but I dont think thats accurate.
Kaze Emanuar has done so much great work in optimizing Mario 64's engine over the years (check out his YouTube videos, they're fantastic) but guys like him are such an anomaly, I'm fine if robots are breathing new life into retro games and empowering consumers to be able to play these games in more ways instead of paying the IP holder every ~7 years to play a (likely lazy) port of a game they already own on a new system.
A huge reason for that is the knee-jerk reaction of some communities (gaming especially, for some weird reason) at AI usage. So people build for an audience of one (maybe sharing with their closed friend group), and move on with their lives.
In the US at least, the gaming industry as a mismanaged trash fire. Workers are underpaid and unemployment is high. Executives are regularly shuttering studios responsible for highly acclaimed games and touting AI as the solution to all the problems. Given this framing, the way to support the studio making your favorite games is to make it clear that you don't want to replace everyone with AI. In fact, no AI use at all. It's one extreme in response to another.
From a hobbiest perspective, it's not great either. Translation projects that have been in the works for years have gotten beat to the punch by (extremely shoddy) AI projects helmed by people who don't speak the language they're supposedly translating. In one recent case, a half-completed human translation was stolen, finished with AI, and presented as an original work. Decompilation projects have had similar issues; AI use isn't disclosed until people start discovering that the result isn't accurate to the original.
Feel how you want about it, but as a in industry programmer, I have watched phrasing shift from
Coding: Writing code by hand
Vibe coding: writing code by prompt
to
Manual Coding: Writing code by hand
Coding: writing code by prompt
I have not seen a single person at work open an IDE. Nor have I talked to anyone that has in a year. Its over, coding via ai IS coding now.
You can't blame open source projects for rejecting PRs out of hand, when they have a hundred thousand lines of garbage. Not everybody is ready for their project to completely descend into slop yet. Maybe in a couple years though.
I am in a bubble yes, but a bubble further down the path you are headed down. I am sorry to say it, but coding by hand is over.
Listen, I joined this profession because I loved writing code and I was good at it. My job is less interesting now, I no longer get to solve puzzles. I am not an advocate, just a realist. Hand writing code is dead.
EDIT: Its obviously not dead yet, but the path is clear, and the progress is further than people think. If you use chrome, you use vide code, if you use windows you use vibe code. If you have touched a single part of any large software companies products, I guarantee 30+% of what was merged in the last year was written with 100% pure AI and no IDE open at all.
There is no reason why gamers should be OK with use of AI to make games - AI doesn't solve any problems currently haunting the industry, it only exacerbates existing problems. If people were suddenly OK with AI in games, games won't get better - they will get even worse.
I remember I was on a call with a client about a new product we put out which hosts modules of their code on our system, and we were talking about AI and they were asking how they should separate their AI made prototypes with their hand made production items, because obviously stuff that makes it to production obviously has to be remade by humans.
There was a long silence, then someone on my team said no developer had ever once opened a IDE on the entire production product we had built and they where using. Development began 2 years ago and by that time not one developer out of 2,000 at my company was using IDEs.
I am not saying you need to be "OK" with the use of AI to make games. I am saying your "OK" doesn't matter, it will happen. If you fight the lost cause you can delay it, but then you will have no control over how the world looks once the fight is over. Don't get caught up in the fight to prevent it, look for a future compromise you are happy with and work on shaping that future.
This isn't the first time something like this happened, and we can see the results of hoping for it to go away. The invention of the car was full of people who wanted to ban cars, and eventually they lost and we now have tons of car dependent hell holes... What all of those people should have focused on was making sure the laws/regulations/patterns/thoughts around cars were healthy and balanced so that the car future would be healthy and balanced. Instead, they where all or nothing, and once they lost, they no longer had any say in what happened and cars broke through to very little resistance beyond no/yes.
Ah, yes. Thank goodness the FOSS community never generated many different tools for the one purpose before, right? \s