Survey: a third of pull requests on large open-source projects is low-quality AI code

A Linux Foundation survey of 234 open source contributors and maintainers found that projects with more than 50 contributors estimate close to a third of incoming pull requests are low quality or AI-generated. Across all projects the figure is about one in four, and burnout has overtaken code quality as the top concern for maintainers of large projects.

• Projects with 50+ contributors see about a third of pull requests as AI slop
• Across all projects, roughly 25% of incoming changes are low quality or AI-generated
• A third of projects have a formal AI policy, while one in ten bans AI contributions
• Three in four maintainers use AI tools to vet incoming changes