Godot Maintainers Battle Draining AI Slop PRs

• AI-generated pull requests typically feature verbose, nonsensical descriptions that appear to be LLM output rather than human-written explanations[1][3]
• Submitted code often lacks evidence of human testing, with maintainers unable to verify whether authors understand their own changes[1][3]
• The Coolify project developed an 'Anti Slop GitHub Action' tool claiming capability to close 98% of slop PRs through automated filtering[4]
• GitHub's existing features for mitigation include: limiting PRs to collaborators only, disabling PRs entirely, and enforcing temporary interaction limits for specific users[4]
• Projects are exploring AI-to-fight-AI solutions, though maintainers acknowledge this approach 'seems horribly ironic'[2]

The AI slop crisis threatens the sustainability of open-source projects that depend on volunteer maintainers, potentially forcing difficult choices between platform migration, stricter access controls that discourage legitimate contributors, or requiring commercial funding models. The issue highlights a fundamental tension in open-source governance: maintaining welcoming entry points for genuine contributors while filtering out low-quality automated submissions. If unresolved, this could accelerate consolidation toward better-resourced projects and platforms, potentially reducing ecosystem diversity. The crisis also underscores GitHub's conflicted position as a Microsoft-owned platform simultaneously promoting AI tools (Copilot) while facing pressure to mitigate their negative externalities on maintainer communities[1][4][5].