Linus Torvalds now defends AI in the Linux kernel, siding with Google engineer Roman Gushchin over the agentic review tool Sashiko, which independently catches "53.6 percent of issues that would otherwise only show up after human reviewers already approved the code." Torvalds stated, "Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects," and that "AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it’s clearly a useful one." This marks a shift from October 2024, when he dismissed AI as "90 percent marketing and 10 percent reality." Kernel developer Laurent Pinchart had wanted a human to filter Sashiko’s comments, citing the Software Freedom Conservancy’s guidelines, but Torvalds sided with Gushchin, saying the fix is to make the tool help maintainers, not ban it. Elon Musk backed Torvalds under an X post, saying "Linus is right, as usual." The article notes that Microsoft, which "first admitted that a big chunk of their code was AI-written" during "Windows 11’s worst year (2025)," is now seeing Windows 11 "finally having a good year" as models have improved.