When AI Code No Longer Needs a Label

How important is it still to label AI-generated code as such?

In October 2026, the maintainers of the Linux kernel agreed to abolish the existing Assisted-by: LLM tag for AI-assisted contributions [1]. A corresponding change proposal was merged into the documentation development branch on 14 October [2].

The rationale is noteworthy: only around 10% of 18,533 examined code changes carried this tag, although AI tools are already being used far more frequently [3]. The absence of such a notice therefore says little anymore about whether AI was involved.

Transparency is not abandoned in principle. Developers should still be able to make transparent how their contributions were produced and to take responsibility for the code they submit [4].

If even the Linux kernel, one of the largest and most open software projects in the world, no longer requires a label, the question arises: what will companies do whose code no one can inspect? Anyone using AI there already doesn’t have to tell anyone, and now even the example to do so voluntarily is gone.

And it affects us directly: this website runs on a server with Linux. Whether its kernel already contains AI code cannot be said, and that is exactly the point.

Another indication of a post-generative present: AI has long been part of the infrastructure that everything else runs on.