I don't think you are in our N64brew Discord server where the majority of the Libdragon development happens, so you might not be fully up to speed about what's been going on. A long story short is that Libdragon contributors have been using "AI" assisted code (emphasis on assisted, no one is letting LLMs run rampant and make contributions to Libdragon) since at least early last year. At the time I voiced my concerns about this for the exact same reasons as you (horrible for the environment, insane amounts of copyright infringement involved in training them, and how that infringement can cause problems for open source licenses), but I was dismissed because the tools were considered useful. Fair enough, personally it is not my place to tell the contributors what to do because my only contributions to Libdragon were my promotion of it and providing it with the USB library, I am not one of the many people who work hard and sweat their asses off weekly working on this project for free.
I don't really keep my finger on the pulse of other homebrew communities, but since LLM use has been bothering me (and some other users) I did reach out to other communities to inquire how they are approaching the problem. The Game Boy development community has a really good AI policy page on their website that I recommend taking a look at. In general it says that: "We don't endorse it as a community, and maintainers can choose to reject submissions for simply having AI usage, however regardless you must be able to explain and thoroughly vet what you are submitting".
As much as I would personally be in favor of a complete ban due to the issues I brought up, I think this would be infeasible due to it being widely used and, unfortunately, here to stay. It is also a great way to get a community to infight due to constant accusations of using AI and whatnot. I think adopting a policy like the one used in the GB dev community is a lot more realistic than an outright ban at this point, as that would require major refactors of Libdragon code that has been submitted since last year. FWIW I refuse any usage of LLMs on my projects but I am also the only one doing major contributions to them.
It's an issue that tears me apart because I can understand why people use it. I got into the N64 homebrew community when it was really small, I worked hard to provide resources and tools to make people's lives easier in hopes that it could grow the community and make it easier for people to make cool shit. Unfortunately I can't really deny that LLMs do, in fact, lower the barrier of entry significantly (whether its usage is good for people is another issue entirely). I continue to discourage its use, especially for newer community members, but it's a losing battle at this point. I personally enjoy the technical challenge and massive learning opportunities in working on this console, but I can also understand that not everyone cares for that like I do.
If the only thing you care about is just obtaining results, why not pirate the official devkit and just build your stuff off that?
Just to add to this because I am someone who primarily uses the official dev kit, I do so because it is a challenge. In fact, Libdragon has been easier to "obtain results with" for years now. 😋
Reacted by Ali Naci Erdem, Christopher Bonhage, Robin Jones, Nadia Holmquist Pedersen, arthurtilly, Josh Kautz and Kevin R.