With due consideration, we've decided no general policy is necessary or helpful at this time. I want to be clear: I am not in any way intending to downplay the significance of ChatGPT, nor the disruption it has caused to the platform over the last few weeks.

Instead, we're going to stand by the comment I left on this post on December 5th:

While we evaluate, we hope that folks on network sites feel comfortable establishing per-site policies responsive to their communities’ needs.

Each site on the network is going to be impacted by ChatGPT (and its future iterations) in different ways. Of all the sites on the network, Stack Overflow was hit by far the hardest. However, we are measuring its impact both on Stack Overflow and across the network -- and, the impact of ChatGPT is currently diminishing everywhere. Some sites will see more or less activity on a given day, but outside Stack Overflow, it appears to be leveling off to a very slow trickle. On Stack Overflow, its usage rate is still falling quickly.

Because sites are impacted to such different degrees by the usage of ChatGPT, we encourage sites to create these policies as they become an issue. A blanket policy does no good if affected communities are not simultaneously developing the methods they use to combat the material problems they face. Instead, it risks being actively unproductive, by setting an expectation that sites will purge this content without giving them targeted tools to do so.

Our work internally progresses on identifying these posts and making our systems more resilient to issues like this in the future. We recognize that this is a shot across the bow, and the problem isn't going to go away in the long term. But for now, it seems we've weathered this storm mostly intact. As always, we'll reevaluate this decision in the future, if the circumstances warrant it.

And, of course, if any site experiences a volume of GPT posts that are cumbersome to manage, or a site needs any other support managing an influx of unwanted content, we are always happy to help apply the tools we have at our disposal.

With due consideration, we've decided no network-wide, general policy regarding banning ChatGPT, or other AI generated content, is necessary or helpful at this time. However, as detailed in answer to: "Is attribution required for machine-generated text when posting on Stack Exchange?", we do consider AI generated content to be "the work of others" and the requirements for referencing must be followed for all such content on the network.

I want to be clear: I am not in any way intending to downplay the significance of ChatGPT, nor the disruption it has caused to the platform over the last few weeks.

Instead, we're going to stand by the comment I left on this post on December 5th:

While we evaluate, we hope that folks on network sites feel comfortable establishing per-site policies responsive to their communities’ needs.

Each site on the network is going to be impacted by ChatGPT (and its future iterations) in different ways. Of all the sites on the network, Stack Overflow was hit by far the hardest. However, we are measuring its impact both on Stack Overflow and across the network -- and, the impact of ChatGPT is currently diminishing everywhere. Some sites will see more or less activity on a given day, but outside Stack Overflow, it appears to be leveling off to a very slow trickle. On Stack Overflow, its usage rate is still falling quickly.

Because sites are impacted to such different degrees by the usage of ChatGPT, we encourage sites to create these policies as they become an issue. A blanket policy does no good if affected communities are not simultaneously developing the methods they use to combat the material problems they face. Instead, it risks being actively unproductive, by setting an expectation that sites will purge this content without giving them targeted tools to do so.

Our work internally progresses on identifying these posts and making our systems more resilient to issues like this in the future. We recognize that this is a shot across the bow, and the problem isn't going to go away in the long term. But for now, it seems we've weathered this storm mostly intact. As always, we'll reevaluate this decision in the future, if the circumstances warrant it.

And, of course, if any site experiences a volume of GPT posts that are cumbersome to manage, or a site needs any other support managing an influx of unwanted content, we are always happy to help apply the tools we have at our disposal.