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Per a previous discussion, “generative AI” is banned on this site.

Per a recent site-wide announcement, we can request a banner in the answer box stating this policy, and linking to a new Help page that would be created for this purpose.

As shown in that announcement, the banner would look something like this (but in our color scheme):

Image showing the answer field, in focus, with a banner saying "Reminder: Answers generated by Artificial Intelligence tools are not allowed on Stack Overflow. Learn more"

The text of the banner is not customizable, but the text of the Help page that the Learn more link directs to is.

Thus, we need a consensus on

  1. Do we want this banner?

  2. Do we want a Help page, and if so, what should it say?

It’s not clear to me that a banner is necessary for the Help page—Stack Overflow, for example, already had the Help page before the banner existed. So I believe that an answer of “no banner, but the Help page would be good and should say XYZ,” is a valid option.

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A banner is not needed right now. Help page yes.

I've got a couple of kids. I learned very quickly that if you tell a kid not to do something, that's the thing they're going to do. Especially if they weren't even going to think about doing the thing until you told them. We do not have a problem with AI content right now. I can count on one hand the posts I knew or suspected of being AI generated. By putting a banner on the answer box, we're drawing attention to a problem that we don't have, pointing out the possibility of using AI to people who weren't thinking about using AI until we told them. No banner necessary for now.

However, AI generated content has been posted before, and it probably will be posted again. I think having a help page like the one on Stack Overflow would be a helpful resource as a "company official" position on use of AI. Our in-house meta discussion is, of course, sufficient, but an official help page is less vulnerable to "that's just like your opinion man" arguments. Yes help page.

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    \$\begingroup\$ It is unfortunate that they don't enable the banner only when you copy a large chunk of characters. I wanted this, but the current banner implementation is so crude. \$\endgroup\$
    – Akixkisu
    Commented Jan 11 at 19:31
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    \$\begingroup\$ @AkixkisuisonStrike That’s a pretty excellent suggestion to make to SE though, that’d be a pretty good feature. \$\endgroup\$
    – KRyan
    Commented Jan 12 at 15:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ While I agree with the text, I think this would be better titled “banner not yet”. I can see separate arguments for a hard “no” position, and it will be easier to revisit later if we don’t conflate them. \$\endgroup\$
    – fectin
    Commented Jan 12 at 17:02
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    \$\begingroup\$ @AkixkisuisonStrike: I think that was something that users have proposed before. It's not a bad idea, IMO, though it has some issues (e.g. users might not notice it after they've pasted something in, and users who haven't used ChatGPT/genAI may feel like they're getting in trouble for something they haven't done). \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast
    Commented Jan 12 at 18:48

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