Sometimes it really feels like you need to do extensive background checks on everyone involved and be an expert at politics and sociology and biology and geology in order to not accidentally choose an unethical software.
(Not an attack on anyone, just an observation.)
Let me explain why "they use AI" is more often than not a meaningless statement to me. It certainly can be useful to point out — but only if it's truthful. The problem is that it very often isn't. People tend to exaggerate the degree AI is involved because they despise it, and so the dev writing "I used AI to bootstrap this project" on their blog becomes "this software is slop written by AI". There are many ways AI might be part of a project. Maybe the devs only used it to generate themselves a more tailored boilerplate. Maybe they do use it more, but hold themselves to high standards to ensure nothing bad happens. Maybe they vibecoded the whole thing. Maybe they accept AI-assisted contributions, but don't use it themselves. There's a whole lot of nuance that gets condensed into "absolutely zero AI involved" and "irredeemable trash". If you don't care about it, then so be it, but I do.
Volpeon