Why I'm declining your AI generated MR

Summary

Sometimes a merge request (MR) doesn't merit a code review (CR) because AI was used in a bad way that harms the team or the project. For example: Code deletion would improve the MR a lot. You don't know the basics of the language you submitted. Documentation spam. Blatantly inconsistent. Edge case overload. Adding pointless or deprecated dependencies without knowing why. If I decline your AI code MR with no further comments and send you this page then I suspect some of these conditions were met. Despite some recent research and discussions on it I know that AI can be helpful in writing code. However AI misuse is also a new phenomenon and we need guidelines to help identify it. This page was written in 2025 and I expect the tools and guidelines to evolve. Vocabulary Merge Request (MR): when a programmer submits proposed changes to a project in a structured way. This makes it easy for anyone to see the differences and review the changes. Sometimes called a Pull Request. Code Review (CR): when another programmer reviews a MR, provides feedback or improvements, and approves or rejects the changes. Why me? I feel like I'm in a good position to write about this because: I'm a senior computer scientist for AI and cloud. I've been a technical supervisor to about 20 students and juniors. I have degrees and work experience in both computer science and education. I know code and AI. My AI project has a million installs and monthly income. I spend a lot of personal time enjoying, exploring, and discussing AI news and breakthroughs. I don't need a job and I'm not selling anything. I'm not an investor or CEO shilling AI slop and I don't get ad revenue for flaming AI. Why do code reviews? There's thousands of opinions and articles. Here's a good one from Google. Instead of rehashing that, let's focus on what AI misuse threatens. With good code reviews: Authors learn and improve. Reviewers learn and improve. We sanity check important changes. We minimize mental load for both humans...