Following the ban on AI-generated applications in the Flathub directory, a developer decided to investigate whether this ban caused a decline in valuable participants. The developer conducted a study on projects marked with the “AI Slop” tag, which indicated projects utilizing AI in their manifest files or communication with reviewers. This tag was introduced to Flathub in January of the current year.
The study focused on 120 project repositories added between January and April 1. Upon analyzing the latest commits in these repositories, it was discovered that only 32 of them (27%) showed activity from May to July. The remaining 88 projects (73%) were either abandoned or deleted. It was noted that many projects ceased updating shortly after being submitted to Flathub.