That’s fair, as I said, I assumed it was already largely prohibited but I figured if I was unclear on the issue others probably were too.
I feel like I’ve received some of the additional clarity I was looking for so I agree that a new rule specifically forbidding ‘AI’ generated content is probably unnecessary. That being said I wouldn’t necessary mind a post similar to the New posting guideline: Avoid editorialized titles post to refer people to / for setting general expectations.
For 101, ChatGPT (especially if grounded on facts via attachments or web search), is very handy for CS topics, if nothing else. Or, at least that’s what the students of my course tell me.
Unambiguous in that, it is a singular rule which makes it clear to whoever is the OP as to why their contribution was removed.
Between this and assisting with a more structured wording approach, I can see exactly why it can be a useful tool. But this also requires training and understanding it is a tool for assisting not just for writing everything out for you.
I don’t think we have seen much AI posts, so it’s unnecessary IMO.
There was one post where a community member used Gemini to write the discussion and post because they were not confident in their Enlgish. That ended up spreading misinformation that I had to shut down really quickly.
LLMs tend to try force an argument even if the parameters/evidence don’t really line up. So even if a post seems real at first, most AI arguments will exaggerate the conclusions just to follow the user prompt.
yep, anecdotally I’ve perceived that their “personality” tries to always confirm what the user is saying, even if wrong.
but how would they know what to look out for to truly judge it if they don’t know the subject at hand?
Attachments (think self-contained pedagogical material like text books and not blog posts or research papers) ground these LLMs really well. Especially if you force them to always answer with references (Gemini 2.x has a “double check” mode which they’ve found to be useful).
They won’t be able to if they weren’t paying attention during the lectures. I suspect the students who are making the most of it use these LLMs as an assistant to reduce time/effort spent looking things up (information retrieval) like one would, say, by searching the web or searching inside the book. Summaries and explanations may or may not always be helpful for beginners (I’ve personally found summarisation & explanation capabilities of Claude Sonnet to be quite useful for code-base exploration and other code-related tasks on new repositories).
For education, LLMs have the potential (mostly due to the thoroughness of the text books) but like you suspect, the killer product interface isn’t chat, and a lot hinges on document understanding (tables, images, equations, diagrams, etc).
I can agree that user prompt tends to be biased which results in a leaning opinion that may not even be true. I have found LLM to be inaccurate on several occasions and can even be prompted to provide incorrect answers if you want to be malicious.
I like the idea of composing a better written statement or message but it can go sideways quite quickly. As a check for grammer and sentence structure it has been useful but at the same time also becomes a crutch for some.
I seem alone in this, but I respectfully disagree. AI helped in this situation for example and helped the discussion in that thread:
I wasn’t getting the answers I was looking for and AI helped in that specific case. And I know it didn’t help only me as well.
I do agree that LLM generated content should be looked with extra glasses, but a blanket ban would be undesirable IMO.
Also, I previously got a topic banned saying :
Use a search engine and the forum search before posting. No excuses. Ask specific questions after you did that.
In which I replied: Hi, there are no topics on this…?
In which I got a reply from mod:
Feed your literal question e.g. into perplexity.ai
My point here being if you ever decide to go ahead with this (which I’m against for the reasons stated above), please be consequential.
You should post a screenshot so we can see which mod suggested you use AI.
we already banned low effort posts. Any AI post faling in that category we can just remove. Posts that used AI for better structure, better grammar (like we also recommend with LanguageTool) or translation is really fine imho.
This is really a none issue
it’s cuz we actually already remove the crap.
Ah got it 
I intentionally left that part out. This wouldn’t serve anything.
What kind of self-congratulatory post is this?
It’d be good if y’all ever only removed crap. When questioned about the removals, all I’ve seen is either stonewalling or more crap from y’all. Be humble.
You are mudding the topic which is “AI generated” content and not translation or better structure or any of the other tangential things.
In general, AI slop is hard to read and may result in proliferation of high effort posts that are actually low effort. A ban on users / bots if they obsessively post gen AI content (without being explicit that they are) is a valid concern, and not a “non issue”.
The main problem as a human user I see is, dreading a discussion with AI content, no matter if it is a bot or another user using a bot.
I think those concerns are completely valid. Although a lot of staff members have varying opinions on this topic, I do personally support some formal implementation of this rule to inform new members.
Generally though, if you see anything that is obviously AI generated, feel free to flag it it as we will remove it. Most moderators (besides me :/) are volunteers so removal won’t always be timely.
Something something pot and kettle.
So, it’s sounding like we want to add something like this to the FAQ?
Post Only Your Own Thoughts
Using AI to generate post content is forbidden. It is always better to leave a topic unanswered, than to reply with anything other than your own original thoughts and research.
Privacy Guides currently has no stance on AI as a research tool. However, if a poster wanted to know how AI would solve their problem or answer their question, they could ask a variety of commercial or self-hosted AI tools instead of asking here. Therefore, it is already implied that any AI-generated answer is automatically not useful to the discussion.
This website is commonly cited as a source by AI tools when people use AI to research privacy-related topics. If we allowed AI-generated content, then this research could become self-referential and reinforce inaccurate claims. This forum is not meant to be a personal help desk where every single question gets instantly answered, it is meant to be a collection of high-quality knowledge about privacy and security.
Edit: Completed in AI generated content is forbidden
I am of course very interested in hearing others opinions but personally I am very happy with this as the solution so for the time being I’ll mark it as such.
I think you’ve done a really great job of covering all the main concerns with generative AI and fitting it with the style of the rest of the FAQ.