GNOME bans AI-generated extensions

1 day ago 9

Stevie Bonifield

is a news writer covering all things consumer tech. Stevie started out at Laptop Mag writing news and reviews on hardware, gaming, and AI.

Earlier this month, the GNOME Shell Extensions store updated its review guidelines to include a new section specifically stating that “extensions must not be AI-generated,” as reported by It’s FOSS and Phoronix. Developers producing add-ons for the Linux desktop environment can still use AI as a tool, but if their extension’s code contains signs of being mostly written by AI, the updated guidelines say it will be rejected:

One of the developers who reviews extensions for Gnome, Javad Rahmatzadeh, explained in a blog post that the rule change was necessary to address an influx of extension submissions with poorly written, AI-generated code.

According to Rahmatzadeh, AI “has led to receiving packages with many unnecessary lines and bad practices,” as he explains in the post:

The number of submitted packages to EGO is growing every month and we see more and more people joining the extensions community to create their own extensions. Some days, I spend more than 6 hours a day reviewing over 15,000 lines of extension code and answering the community.

In the past two months, we have received many new extensions on EGO. This is a good thing since it can make the extensions community grow even more, but there is one issue with some packages. Some devs are using AI without understanding the code.

This has led to receiving packages with many unnecessary lines and bad practices. And once a bad practice is introduced in one package, it can create a domino effect, appearing on other extensions. That alone has increased the waiting time for all packages to be reviewed.

Extensions for GNOME can serve all kinds of functions, including some that are vital to how the desktop environment runs. For instance, one of the most popular is Dash to Dock, which gives users more control and customization options for the app dock at the bottom of the screen.

The new guidelines clarify that developers are still allowed to use AI as a learning aid and development tool when making their extensions. They just shouldn’t be using AI to generate all of their code without understanding what it does. The Fedora Council introduced similar guidelines around vibe coding earlier this year, although their policy wasn’t a blanket ban.

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