What just happened? Linus Torvalds has expressed frustration over Linux developers submitting ill-timed bug reports just before an RC5 release, with some using AI to detect trivial issues. He added that several of the fixes are also being written by AI, and that the AI-generated code often adds bloat to the Linux kernel rather than addressing the actual problem.
In his weekly state of the kernel update, Torvalds noted that the new RC5 is much larger than any other RC5 in recent memory, and he blamed developers for using AI to submit "pointless pull requests." Torvalds added that he is "not entirely happy" about the additional bloat, especially because the changes can largely be attributed to "totally irrelevant stuff."
Torvalds urged developers to be more diligent about their pull requests and warned that going forward, he will have to be more "hard-nosed" about unnecessary churn, especially when it's late in the cycle. According to him, in the days leading up to an RC5 release, developers should look for regressions rather than spending time on non-critical fixes to long-standing issues.
Explaining his stance on smaller bugs, Torvalds said that even trivial fixes could introduce new issues that could hurt long-term system stability, so developers must avoid submitting new fixes late in the cycle. "Trivial fixes ... may have a pretty low chance of causing problems, but low chance is still not zero chance," he noted.
Torvalds has long been warning about the increasing number of AI-generated bug reports that he claims are breaking Linux kernel development. Following the release of the fourth release candidate of Linux 7.1 earlier this month, he noted that duplicate AI-generated reports are clogging security channels, creating unnecessary work for the few developers who actually try to resolve the problems.
Claiming that the security mailing list has become unmanageable due to a sharp rise in AI-powered bug reports, Torvalds noted that developers need to be aware of the "enormous duplication" in bug reports right now, caused by different people finding the same bugs using the same AI tools.
It is worth noting that Torvalds is not against vibe coding. Earlier this year, he announced that he had joined a long list of well-known developers who use generative AI to write code. According to the Linux creator, he used Google's Antigravity AI - a coding assistant built to generate code via natural-language input - to generate Python code for a side project called AudioNoise.