Re: AI slop "contributions" to IETF working groups

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> Sun, 08 February 2026 01:55 UTC

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From: John Levine <johnl@taugh.com>
To: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Re: AI slop "contributions" to IETF working groups
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It appears that Bob Hinden  <bob.hinden@gmail.com> said:
>I like the idea of requiring a disclosure that an Internet Draft was written with AI tools.  I agree probably not for emails.

I expect that the people whose drafts most suffer from being written by an LLM will lie about it, either because
their English is too poor to understand the rules, or they have perverse incentives like an an employer that
gives them a bonus for publishing an RFC.

Then what?  I'm not saying we shouldn't ask, but I'm saying we need to be prepared for noncompliance.

R's,
John