The developers behind the brilliant PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 have pushed back against a fervour of AI code requests to the open-source project’s GitHub.
As the only viable PlayStation 3 emulator, the open-source fan project has come leaps and bounds over the last decade. In recent years, major performance gains have been made, all by human coders, and the team is now actively pushing back against so-called vibe coders making pull requests with AI.
In a statement on social media, the team behind RPCS3 pushed back against the barrage of AI pull requests on the project. While the team explained that there is no concrete ban on AI-generated code, many are adding the offending materials without disclosure.
“Please stop submitting AI slop code pull requests to RPCS3. We will start banning those who do without disclosing,” the official RPCS3 account told followers. “There are plenty of resources online to learn how to debug and code instead of generating slop that you don’t understand and that doesn’t work.”
The team explained that everyone involved in the project is “free” to use AI generated code. However, the code must be disclosed as AI-generated before hand before being taken into consideration. Additionally, the team explained that the project has managed to thrive without any AI code use thus far. “RPCS3 reached maturity with 70% playable games several years ago, before these code LLMs were a thing,” they said.
The team behind the project explained that those who know how to program without AI have their own uses for LLMs. In recent weeks, the team has noticed a massive increase in code that is obviously gargled out from chatbots, though. “It either is obviously slop or isn’t,” they said. “You can’t possibly handwrite the type of sh*t AI slop we have been seeing.”
Right now, the issue with so-called ‘vibe-coders’ is that many who use AI to produce code are not experienced enough to know the issues with that code. With this in mind, poor-quality code can introduce new bugs, decrease performance, and introduce a number of other issues.
Since the team’s refusal of AI-generated code requests, official RPCS3 channels have been flooded with backlash from pro-AI accounts. While the team has not announced a blanket ban on AI code, many online took issue with the team’s slight anti-AI stance.
“As for all the AI bros seething on our socials, we’re simply blocking you,” they said. “Learn how to debug, code, and leave behind something useful to humanity when you’re gone, instead of peddling slop.”
RPCS3 is available right now for free on PC, Linux, MacOS, and FreeBSD.
