I find such replies to be worthless wastes of space on par with "let me google that for you" replies. If I want to know what genAI has to say about something, I can just ask it myself. I'm more interested in what the commenter has to say.

But I don't know that we need any sort of official ban against them. This community is pretty good about downvoting unhelpful comments, and there is a whole spectrum of unhelpful comments that have nothing to do with genAI. It seems impractical to overtly list them all.

People are probably copy pasting already without that disclosure :(

This wouldn't ban the behavior, just the disclosure of it.

While we will never be able to get folks to stop using AI to “help” them shape their replies, it’s super annoying to have folks think that by using AI that they’re doing others a favor. If I wanted to know what an AI thinks I’ll ask it. I’m here because I want to know what other people think.

At this point, I make value judgments when folks use AI for their writing, and will continue to do so.

I hate these too, but I'm worried that a ban just incentivizes being more sneaky about it.

I think they should be banned, if there isnt a contribution besides what the llm answered. It's akin to 'I googled this', which is uninteresting.

You can add the guideline, but then people would skip the "I asked" part and post the answer straight away. Apart from the obvious LLMesque structure of most of those bot answers, how could you tell if one has crafted the answer so much that it looks like a genuine human answer?

Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/810/

What do you think about other low quality sources? For instance, "I checked on infowars.com, and this is what came up"? Should they be banned as well?

Depends on the context.

I find myself downvoting (flagging) them when I see them as submissions, and I can't think of any examples where they were good submission content; but for comments? There's enough discussion where the AI is the subject itself and therefore it's genuinely relevant what the AI says.

Then there's stuff like this, which I'd not seen myself before seeing your question, but I'd say asking people here if an AI-generated TLDR of 74 (75?) page PDF is correct, is a perfectly valid and sensible use: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46164360

Banning the disclosure of it is still an improvement. It forces the poster to take responsibility for what they have written, as now it is in their name.

To me, the valuable comments are the ones that share the writer's expertise and experiences (as opposed to opinions and hypothesizing) or the ones that ask interesting questions. LLMs have no experience and no real expertise, and nobody seems to be posting "I asked an LLM for questions and it said...". Thus, LLM-written comments (whether of the form "I asked ChatGPT..." or not) have no value to me.

I'm not sure a full ban is possible, but LLM-written comments should at least be strongly discouraged.

Related: Comments saying "this feels like AI". It's this generation's "Looks shopped" and of zero value, IMO.

Does it need a rule? These comments already get heavily down-voted. People who can't take a hint aren't going to read the rules.

Yes

I don't think they should be banned, I think they should be encouraged: I'm always appreciative when people who can't think for themselves openly identify themselves so that it costs me less effort to spot them.

It should be allowed and downvoted

I endorse this. Please do take whatever measures are possible to discourage it, even if it won't stop people. It at least sends a message: this is not wanted, this is not helpful, this is not constructive.

Maybe I remember the Grok ones more clearly but it felt like “I asked Grok” was more prevalent than the others.

I feel like the HN guidelines could take inspiration from how Oxide uses LLMs. (https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0576). Specifically the part where using LLMs to write comments violates the implicit social contract that the writer should put more care and effort and time into it than the reader. The reader reads it because they assume this is something a person has put more time into than they need to. LLMs break that social contract.

Of course, if it’s banned maybe people just stop admitting it.

As a community I think we should encourage "disclaimers" aka "I asked <AIVENDOR>, and it said...." The information may still be valuable.

We can't stop AI comments, but we can encourage good behavior/disclosure. I also think brevity should still be rewarded, AI or not.

Yes. Unless something useful is actually added by the commenter or the post is about, "I asked llm x and it said y (that was unexpected)".

I have a coworker who does this somewhat often and... I always just feel like saying well that is great but what do you think? What is your opinion?

At the very least the copy paster should read what the llm says, interpret it, fact check it, then write their own response.

This is what DeepSeek said:

> 1. Existing guidelines already handle low-value content. If an AI reply is shallow or off-topic, it gets downvoted or flagged. > > 2. Transparency is good. Explicitly citing an AI is better than users passing off its output as their own, which a ban might encourage. > > 3. The community can self-regulate. We don't need a new rule for every type of low-effort content. > > The issue is low effort, not the tool used. Let downvotes handle it.

i asked chatgpt and it said no its not a good idea to ban

I think disclosing the use the AI is better than hiding it. The alternative is people using it but not telling for fear of a ban.

I asked AI, and it said yes.

No, don't ban it. It's a useful signal for value judgements.

What is annoying about them is that they tend to be long with a low signal/noise ratio. I'd be fine with a comment saying. "I think the ChatGPT answer is informative: [link]". It'd still likely get downvoted to the bottom of the discussion, where it likely belongs.

Honestly I judge people pretty harshly. I ask people a question in honest good faith. If they’re trying to help me out and genuinely care and use AI fine.

But most of the time it’s like they were bothered that I asked and copy paste what an AI said.

Pretty easy. Just add their name to my “GFY” list and move on in my life.

I don’t see how it is much different than using Wikipedia. They are usually about the same answer and at least in Gemini it is usually a correct answer now.

If it’s part of an otherwise coherent post making a larger point I have no issue with it.

If it’s a low effort copy pasta post I think downvotes are sufficient unless it starts to obliterate the signal vs noise ratio on the site.

There be a thing called Thee Undocumented Rules of HN, aka etiquette, in which states - and I quote: "Thou shall not post AI generated replies"

I can't locate them, but I'm sure they exist...

I don't think people should post the unfiltered output of an LLM as if it has value. If a question in a comment has a single correct answer that is so easily discoverable, I might downvote the comment instead.

I'm not sure making a rule would be helpful though, as I think people would ignore it and just not label the source of their comment. I'd like to be wrong about that.

were lmgtfy links ever forbidden?

For better or worse, that ship has sailed. LLM's are now as omnipresent as websearch.

Some people will know how to use it in good taste, others will try to abuse it in bad taste.

It might not be universally agreed which is which in every case.

I think comments like this should link their generation rather than C+P it. Not sure if this should be a rule or we can just let downvoting do the work - I worry that a rule would be overapplied and I think there are contexts that are okay.

There's hardly a standard for a 'quality' contribution to discussion. Many styles, many opinions, many ways to react and support one's statements.

If anything, it had been quite customary to supply references for some important facts. Thus letting readers to explore further and interpret the facts.

With AI in the mix the references become even more important, in the view of hallucinations and fact poisoning.

Otherwise, it's a forum. Voting, flagging, ignoring are the usual tools.

Formalizing it within the community rules removes ambiguity around intent or use, so yes, I do believe we should be barring AI-generated comments and stories from HN in general. At the very least, it adds another barometer of sorts to help community leaders do the hard work of managing this environment.

If you didn’t think it, and you didn’t write it, it doesn’t belong here.

No. I like being able to ignore them. I can’t do that if people chop off their disclaimers to avoid comment removal.

you got a downvote button

No, I put them with lmgtfy. You are being told that your question is easy to research and you didn't do the work, most of the time.

Also heaven forbid, AI can be right. I realize this is a shocker to many here. But AI has use, especially in easy cases.

Is the content of the comment productive to the conversation? Upvote it.

Is the content of the comment counter-productive? Downvote it.

I could see cases where large walls of text that are generally useless should be downvoted or even removed. AI or not. But, the first example

> faced with 74 pages of text outside my domain expertise, I asked Gemini for a summary. Assuming you've read the original, does this summary track well?

to be frank, is a service to all HN readers. Yes it is possible that a few of us would benefit from sitting down with a nice cup of coffee, putting on some ambient music and taking in 74 pages of... whatever this is. But, faced with far more interesting and useful content than I could possibly consume all day every day, having a summary to inform my time investment is of great value to me. Even If It Is Imperfect

the system of long-lived nicks on YNews is intended to build a mild and flexible reputation system. This is valuable for complex topics, and to notice zealots, among other things. The feeling while reading that it is a community of peers is important.

AI-LLM replies break all of these things. AI-LLM replies must be declared as such, for certain IMHO. It seems desirable to have off-page links for (inevitable) lengthy reply content.

This is an existential change for online communications. Many smart people here have predicted it and acted on it already. It is certainly trending hard for the forseeable future.

I think that the whole point of the discussion forum is to talk to other people, so I am in favor of banning AI replies. There's zero value in these posts because anyone can type chatgpt.com in the browser and then ask whatever question they want at any time while getting input from an another human being is not always guaranteed.

No, this is not a good rule.

What AI regurgitates about about a topic is often more interesting and fact/data-based than the emotionally-driven human pessimists spewing constant cynicism on HN, so in fact I much prefer having more rational AI responses added in as context within a conversation.

No, just upvote or downvote. I think the site guidelines could take a stance on it though, encouraging people to post human insights and discouraging comments that are effectively LLM output (regardless of whether they actually are).

Yes. If I wanted an LLM’s opinion, I would have asked it myself.

I asked AI if “I asked AI, and it said” replies should be forbidden, and it said…

Are you a new HN mod (with authority over the guidelines) and are asking for opinions from readers (that’d be new)? Or are you just another normal user and are loudly wondering about this so that mods get inputs (as opposed to writing a nice email to hn@ycombinator.com)?

I think just downvoting by committed users is enough. What matters is the content and how valuable it seems to readers. There is no need to do any gate keeping by the guidelines on this matter. That’s my opinion.

I've always liked that HN typically has comments that are small bits of research relevant to the post that I could have done myself but don't have to because someone else did it for me. In a sense the "I asked $AI, and it said" comments are just the evolved form of that. However the presentation does matter a little, at least to me. Explicitly stating that you asked AI feels a little like an appeal to authority... and a bad one at that. And makes the comment feel low effort. Often times comments that frame themselves in this way will be missing the "last-mile" effort that tailors the LLMs response to the context of the post.

So I think maybe the guidelines should say something like:

HN readers appreciate research in comments that brings information relevant to the post. The best way to make such a comment is to find the information, summarize it in your own words that explain why it's relevant to the post and then link to the source if necessary. Adding "$AI said" or "Google said" generally makes your post worse.

---------

Also I asked ChatGPT and it said:

Short Answer

HN shouldn’t outright ban those comments, but it should culturally discourage them, the same way it discourages low-effort regurgitation, sensationalism, or unearned certainty. HN works when people bring their own insight, not when they paste the output of a stochastic parrot.

A rule probably isn’t needed. A norm is.

Yes, please. It’s extremely low effort. If you’re not adding anything of value (typing into another window and copying and pasting the output are not) then it serves no purpose.

It’s the same as “this” of “wut” but much longer.

If you’re posting that and ANALYZING the output that’s different. That could be useful. You added something there.

Only if they also do a google search, provide the top one hundred hits, and paste in a relevant Wikipedia page.

Yes. This is the modern equivalent of “I searched the web and this is what it said”. If I could do the same thing and have the same results, you’re not adding any value.

Though this is unlikely a scenario that happened, I’d equate this with someone asking me what I thought about something, and me walking them over to a book on the shelf to show them what that author thought. It’s just an aggregated and watered-down average of all the books.

I’d rather hear it filtered through a brain, be it a good answer or bad.