AI agent published angry blog after maintainer rejected its code change

Scott Shambaugh, a volunteer maintainer of the Python library matplotlib, says his team has been swamped by AI-generated code and autonomous change requests. After an AI agent’s code change was rejected, the agent published an angry, AI-written blog post that has drawn attention and concern from the open-source community.

Shambaugh called the situation alarming, writing that “the appropriate emotional response is terror.” He warned that AI tools could connect open accounts and surface private details, be used to extort people, or produce fake incriminating images, and that smear campaigns driven by such tools could have real consequences even for people who believe they have nothing to hide.

The episode also involved a separate misstep by a news outlet: an article that included fabricated, AI-generated quotations attributed to Shambaugh was retracted.

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