Do NOT add AI to Scratch — #NoAIOnScratch

BitcoinFarmer

WormChow wrote:
ilIusionator wrote:
Everybody on this topic hates AI because everybody else does.

and since scratch is a platform for kids, they hop on the bandwagon for no real reason
Heyyy that's not fair to the hundreds of us who have good reasons for disliking the CLA

I see there are points against the AI but almost nobody goes pro the AI albeit there are good reasons for it.

I feell ike many people in fact join this topic because it is somewhat emotionally negatively written (especially the replies) and then just join the others that say the Scratch AI is bad (which is a pretty widespread thesis). if like1000 posts say it, sounds reasonable, don't it?

Socool438

say [scratch if you add ai I will  crash out] for (2) secs
when I receive [scratch adding ai  v]
play sound [crashing out noises  v]

BitcoinFarmer

BitcoinFarmer wrote:
I think people should read my old post. I don't know about doing it like this but I'll just quote myself so this doesnt get buried.

Actually, there are counter agruments.
I updated this list from my previous quotes to integrate and value the progress we made whilst discussing them.

Let us get into some points from the original topic.

1.) I do use AI pretty much almost everyday, but AI on Scratch seems very out of place and takes away from the one key charm of Scratch, that being human made-projects, human moderation, human users, etc. An AI, even in the place of just “helping” users is highly out of place.

I feel like this is a fair point in the sense of Ai being implemented in places where it is not seen as wanted and often unfitting. My personal example here is YouTube which has a feature where it automatically created an other language version of some videos using AI voices that terribly suck.
However, Scratch is different in the sense of that it IS a learning platform. And for coding. The thing here is, that AI is bringing in a big change and that change shall also be represented in how coding is taught, because the methods are simply different now.
The AI is here to assist the people, not replace them (as in: guided help to make you reach more not as in dr. chatgpt did my math homework) and as I read it partially to find snippets of code from others and help you patch them into your work.
I do already practice similar with my own works of coding where I reuse old stuff I wrote like 3 years ago in a new project nowadays.
I see the critique here that people don't want this but I feel like the backpack is the same principle and remixing also. It should be delivered with an unremovable comment block that gives credit.

2.) Some users said that you can just use ChatGPT if you really need help, but I disagree. As I stated in my original post, we have human resources on Scratch to help you out such as the Help with Scripts forum and tutorials. There is no need for AI to spill over into places that were always predominantly human-made.

Some users said xxx… But let us have a look. Human resources are always the best way, I couldn't agree more. But they are not infinitely aviable. You can't ask a tutorial questions and help with scripts has neither guaranteed response nor guaranteed quality response. The AI at least has the first of those. Also, the Scratch Team did not enforce people to use the forums and the forums are kind of on retreat in the moment. This is probably due to them being hard to moderate and the size of the Scratch team. For this reason, a discuss button from the top bar of Scratch (next to explore ideas etc) was removed.

3.) AI is expensive, and notice how Scratch Membership conveniently rolled around when the Scratch Foundation announced that they were going to be making an AI for Scratch? Just sayin'

I agree that AI is expensive and a big step. But I wouldn't make too explicit connections here before anything. I do think that a bit of a shift is happening in Scratch, but a membership that helps support Scratch is, if implemented correctly a fair idea. Also, this topic is about the AI.

4.) This isn't a view on AI related but it's just something I need to address. Please refrain from using AI in this post because you're going to start a flame war and that's just unnecessary and defeats the purpose of this topic. And if someone does use AI, please do not ridicule them for it, you just look like a jerk.

I am a human and not using AI in my replies.

5.) Some AI training models have been under fire for being trained on either copyrighted material or material that it's creator didn't consent to using. How will we know if the people developing this AI for Scratch aren't using usermade projects without their consent? It's unethical regardless of whose the actual owner.

This is a bigger problem here and I don't personally favor big AI companies. However, Scratch doesnt have to follow these patterns. If the Scratch management decides for a way with consent here, this will be ethical. Don't blame the sole existence of AI for this though.

6.) AI can tend to be incorrect or hallucinate. And some AI's, like ChatGPT, really only tell you what you want to hear. And then some AI's like Gemini are really boring and have no personality and tend to just give up and redirect you to Google searches, which sucks.

Nobody can expect the AI to be perfect. It is trained off the works of humans and as we all know, those humans make mistakes, so where in the process should it get perfect?
The AI serves as a learning asistant that seriously takes itself the time to work through your project, like a teacher, but you'd also have it aviable at home, it doesn't get tired or unmotivated of reading through a messy project and it always has time.
Also, as it is meant to be educational, the AI will not be implemented in a way that it does things for you and if it for example gives you an existent sprite from somewhere and advises you on how to implement them but you have to actually do that whilst it explains, then you learn something.
Also, I totally agree; you can trick AI with some weird things and this looks really like it is unreliable but remember humans are also easily misinformed, unlogical or chaotic and often also make mistakes. The fact, that ChatGPT tells you what you want to hear is because it is a commercial product that wants to keep its users active. Scratch does not need to follow this line. The Gemini is the same but it's good for google to redirect you to searching and show you ads.
And I do not think that the AI is supposed to be “fun” here in the sense of: hey chatty, tell me a joke or something. It is mainly a coding tool and not an entertainment robot and therefore supposed to rather be helpful and assisting in programming than your “friend”.

7.) Kids might not understand AI boundaries because they can’t always tell the difference between facts, bots making stuff up, real people giving help, and so on. They trust the computer because “it must be right.” The AI could accidentally teach bad coding habits, misinformation, or encourage dependency. None of that matches Scratch’s mission.

This counts for the entire internet. Also this counts for other people as well. Someone state something (“omg scratch gets an image generator trained off our art” and without fact checking 20 scratch users be panic.

8.) Scratch is supposed to be a safe sandbox, not a tech experiment. Kids come here to learn coding basics, not be beta testers for a foundation’s new AI project. Scratch Team using Scratch kids as guinea pigs for a trendy AI rollout feels morally shaky. If they wanna play with AI, cool — but don’t use children as the testing ground.

I see this point but I do think that this is not an experiment as AI has been around for some while. If the new coding basics include the usage of helping AI, that is how it is. This is not about trends. Also, the AI can be seen as pretty safe and easier to moderate than if we had for example ten times the forum population. This would be a big chaos where dangerous trolls and spammers could be active and unseen. Just pointing this out.

9.) Even if the Scratch Team swears “AI won’t be behind a paywall,” let’s be fr. Services cost money. AI costs SERIOUS money. Membership suddenly appearing at the SAME time isn’t a coincidence. Eventually, features get split: “Basic users get slow AI”, “Members get advanced AI help”, “Members get more AI tokens”, “Members get better project analysis”, “Members get priority moderation”… It creates a two-class system on a platform designed for kids learning to code.

I see the danger you are trying to point out here and I feel like if it went this way it were a serious break with the scratch we used to know alike. However, once again I am not into conspiracies. If the AI is implemented correctly though, then the AI is an equal tool for everyone and the membership keeps out of coding features and sticks with badges, tags and themes like cat blocks. I feel like a harmful and restrictive token system would be definitely a chance, but as I see it, Scratch it is the most likely that sticks to it's values combined with AI, and this will not happen. Remember, that the membership is your way to support this free platform at running by basically donating and they just give a little back, not like YouTube premium with no ads or an AI premium deal. This is a totally different concept.

Last edited by BitcoinFarmer (Feb. 7, 2026 13:51:49)

Real_NebulaUmbreon

Socool438 wrote:

say [scratch if you add ai I will  crash out] for (2) secs
when I receive [scratch adding ai  v]
play sound [crashing out noises  v]

interesting choice of words

The21stNumber

Gaehivian_Karen wrote:
The21stNumber wrote:
GreenFox701 wrote:
The21stNumber wrote:
GreenFox701 wrote:
WHY! (I HATE AI) WHY!!!!
Because, why would the big corporations care about their user base and what they think? It makes them money!
Ig but Scratch Loves Their Followers and Users so idus
Yeah, they usually do. But they usually have paid attention to the people who are saying things about stuff. This time they really haven't
Yeah it feels like they're starting to abandon their userbase in favor of money.

They are. They haven't done this before.

GNARPY34561

Okay I just want to bring something up, does anyone find it weird that SF brought out this new AI stuff out of the blue? Like lets just make things very clear here, scratch is a nonprofit website that's honestly quite poor, and AI is extremely costy and unprofitable. And in the new TOS it talked about some weird commercial related stuff, and if I remember correctly, mentioned some social media sites for some reason. So… this is kind of a crackpot theory… but do you think some major AI company is behind this? Like where are they getting the funding from? Like is ChatGPT backing them up or something like that what's going on here… *conspiracy time* Because I mean the alternative option is that Scratch Foundation literally just doesn't care about its users and is willing to use the company resources on features literally nobody cares about or wants, “Dark mode, nahhh have this AI nobody asked for” “Better moderation, well we would give it to you but were too busy spending money on AI”. Like even if there isn't a crazy conspiracy going on, it's messed up that company resources are going into AI slop when we could instead have better moderation and features people have been asking for for years.

d016

GNARPY34561 wrote:
Okay I just want to bring something up, does anyone find it weird that SF brought out this new AI stuff out of the blue? Like lets just make things very clear here, scratch is a nonprofit website that's honestly quite poor, and AI is extremely costy and unprofitable. And in the new TOS it talked about some weird commercial related stuff, and if I remember correctly, mentioned some social media sites for some reason. So… this is kind of a crackpot theory… but do you think some major AI company is behind this? Like where are they getting the funding from? Like is ChatGPT backing them up or something like that what's going on here… *conspiracy time* Because I mean the alternative option is that Scratch Foundation literally just doesn't care about its users and is willing to use the company resources on features literally nobody cares about or wants, “Dark mode, nahhh have this AI nobody asked for” “Better moderation, well we would give it to you but were too busy spending money on AI”. Like even if there isn't a crazy conspiracy going on, it's messed up that company resources are going into AI slop when we could instead have better moderation and features people have been asking for for years.

SF does have sponsors, so maybe this AI thing is going to make the sponsors give more money?

(P.S: they didn't bring AI out of the blue, they brought it out of the purple navbar

)

Last edited by d016 (Jan. 29, 2026 17:50:47)

pom_cookie

cambegonefr wrote:
Bitebite12 wrote:
According to scratch, the AI will assist. The scratcher will still make the project, but the ai will help them fix bugs, brainstorm, and break down things you don't understand.
And that's the problem the OP stated. What about trial and error, creativity, and the good feeling of learning on your own?

This is a very good point! So many people lack proper cognitive function because of over using AI and not actually using their brains to learn and problem solve. Does Scratch really want that for all these kids on their website?

violet_foxiz

pom_cookie wrote:
cambegonefr wrote:
Bitebite12 wrote:
According to scratch, the AI will assist. The scratcher will still make the project, but the ai will help them fix bugs, brainstorm, and break down things you don't understand.
And that's the problem the OP stated. What about trial and error, creativity, and the good feeling of learning on your own?
This is a very good point! So many people lack proper cognitive function because of over using AI and not actually using their brains to learn and problem solve. Does Scratch really want that for all these kids on their website?

SEIROUSLEY AGREED AS WELL! we learn better from mistakes and just from mixing the blocks together and expirmenting ON MY OWN just like 90% of you guys

violet_foxiz

AI should never be teachers but only something that should've been used for fun only its already taken over lots of art music ASMR food the internet friends writing and even so much now BUT EVEN CODING AND TEACHING!? that's the most dumbest thing I've seen

GNARPY34561

d016 wrote:
GNARPY34561 wrote:
Okay I just want to bring something up, does anyone find it weird that SF brought out this new AI stuff out of the blue? Like lets just make things very clear here, scratch is a nonprofit website that's honestly quite poor, and AI is extremely costy and unprofitable. And in the new TOS it talked about some weird commercial related stuff, and if I remember correctly, mentioned some social media sites for some reason. So… this is kind of a crackpot theory… but do you think some major AI company is behind this? Like where are they getting the funding from? Like is ChatGPT backing them up or something like that what's going on here… *conspiracy time* Because I mean the alternative option is that Scratch Foundation literally just doesn't care about its users and is willing to use the company resources on features literally nobody cares about or wants, “Dark mode, nahhh have this AI nobody asked for” “Better moderation, well we would give it to you but were too busy spending money on AI”. Like even if there isn't a crazy conspiracy going on, it's messed up that company resources are going into AI slop when we could instead have better moderation and features people have been asking for for years.
SF does have sponsors, so maybe this AI thing is going to make the sponsors give more money?

(P.S: they didn't bring AI out of the blue, they brought it out of the purple navbar )

Yeah that's what I'm saying, maybe some AI company is sponsoring SF on the condition that they create an AI bot, like this just feels weird man.

Socool438

did scratch just add AI or no

pom_cookie

Socool438 wrote:
did scratch just add AI or no

As far as I know, they are currently training it with the community's projects so it's not ready yet.

pom_cookie

The21stNumber wrote:
Gaehivian_Karen wrote:
The21stNumber wrote:
GreenFox701 wrote:
The21stNumber wrote:
GreenFox701 wrote:
WHY! (I HATE AI) WHY!!!!
Because, why would the big corporations care about their user base and what they think? It makes them money!
Ig but Scratch Loves Their Followers and Users so idus
Yeah, they usually do. But they usually have paid attention to the people who are saying things about stuff. This time they really haven't
Yeah it feels like they're starting to abandon their userbase in favor of money.
They are. They haven't done this before.

It's probably to please investors. Have you noticed more and more companies are adding AI in some way? It's because it's what investors want and makes them… well, invest. None of these companies care what customers think because they would lose more money if they didn't add AI and had investors leave than if they do add AI and customers leave.

Rosics

pom_cookie wrote:
It's probably to please investors. Have you noticed more and more companies are adding AI in some way? It's because it's what investors want and makes them… well, invest. None of these companies care what customers think because they would lose more money if they didn't add AI and had investors leave than if they do add AI and customers leave.

scratch has no investors lol

Exascerbescence

pom_cookie wrote:
cambegonefr wrote:
Bitebite12 wrote:
According to scratch, the AI will assist. The scratcher will still make the project, but the ai will help them fix bugs, brainstorm, and break down things you don't understand.
And that's the problem the OP stated. What about trial and error, creativity, and the good feeling of learning on your own?
This is a very good point! So many people lack proper cognitive function because of over using AI and not actually using their brains to learn and problem solve. Does Scratch really want that for all these kids on their website?

I did once get addicted to AI when I was a much more vulnerable person and I think the people who support AI should know what that’s like before they make their decision.

You lose all of your energy, you no longer have any will to create or do things, you stop researching and pursuing inspiration and ideas and thinking deeply and trying to understand the world around you, because why not just ask the AI? You lose the ability to fact-check and become gullible and eventually you stop having the energy to just go for a walk. This is not exaggeration, this is personal experience and I only got out of it because I knew the AI (or rather, the company behind it) was there to take all of my time and control me.

How in the world are young children supposed to navigate this? I do realize that Scratch is a non-profit, but you still quite directly risk exposing young children to these other intentionally controlling AIs. I have seen grown adults who allow themselves to get controlled by this sort of hyperconvenience and not even take a moment to question it. There are 7 year olds here. I fear that including an AI here would not just be annoying and saddening but could quietly ruin lives.

knowitall1237

I feel like the CLA would be entirely useless for younger children (the people this is supposed to help) simply because:
AI requires a good prompt in order to give good results.
How could AI understand something worded like this? (The quote is from a suggestion btw)

someone wrote:
cat can help you
??

100%

st need to see it

Last edited by knowitall1237 (Jan. 29, 2026 18:40:59)

BitcoinFarmer

Exascerbescence wrote:
I did once get addicted to AI when I was a much more vulnerable person and I think the people who support AI should know what that’s like before they make their decision.

You lose all of your energy, you no longer have any will to create or do things, you stop researching and pursuing inspiration and ideas and thinking deeply and trying to understand the world around you, because why not just ask the AI? You lose the ability to fact-check and become gullible and eventually you stop having the energy to just go for a walk. This is not exaggeration, this is personal experience and I only got out of it because I knew the AI (or rather, the company behind it) was there to take all of my time and control me.

How in the world are young children supposed to navigate this? I do realize that Scratch is a non-profit, but you still quite directly risk exposing young children to these other intentionally controlling AIs. I have seen grown adults who allow themselves to get controlled by this sort of hyperconvenience and not even take a moment to question it. There are 7 year olds here. I fear that including an AI here would not just be annoying and saddening but could quietly ruin lives.

This is really a sad and shocking story, I totally agree.
The commercial AI products like ChatGPT are in fact built for making you engage with them more and more and boost over reliance. As a person who is interested in specific topics, I do see how the ChatGPT enforces patterns that feel “fun” and make you want to rely on it more. This is true for the commercial AI and really even more dangerous for children.

However. we can't blame this on the artificial intelligence itself but rather it's creators. For ChatGPT for example it is a commercial company that wants to of course make dependent customers and short-wire their brain to simply ask le gpt instead of enforcing them to think themselves and make free choice.
Here though comes the difference to Scratch Ai. This is because the Scratch AI is not created out of commercial interest, just like Scratch is a nonprofit. This AI is here to teach and help and not tom maximize user engagement, sell ads or opinions (if AIs do that which I doubt though). The AI in a scratch environment serves as a learning asistant that seriously takes itself the time to work thorugh your project, like a teacher, but you'd also have it aviable at home, it doesn't get tired or unmotivated of reading through a messy project and it always has time.
Because it is meant to be educational and a non commercial tool for working, the AI will not be implemented in a way that it does things for you and if it for example gives you an existent sprite from somewhere and advises you on how to implement it but you have to actually do that whilst it explains, then you learn something. It is not built to enforce dependence and vibe coding.

In summa:
The addiction experience you had was caused by the capitalist principles of the AI that make it want to make users engage with it in unhealthy ammounts and make them dependent. This is not the same for Scratch which is a nonprofit. Blame capitalism.

Similar experiences also exist on other commercial platforms not necessarily about AI, such as social media (algorythms) and further.

Last edited by BitcoinFarmer (Jan. 29, 2026 18:44:34)

Exascerbescence

BitcoinFarmer wrote:
Exascerbescence wrote:
I did once get addicted to AI when I was a much more vulnerable person and I think the people who support AI should know what that’s like before they make their decision.

You lose all of your energy, you no longer have any will to create or do things, you stop researching and pursuing inspiration and ideas and thinking deeply and trying to understand the world around you, because why not just ask the AI? You lose the ability to fact-check and become gullible and eventually you stop having the energy to just go for a walk. This is not exaggeration, this is personal experience and I only got out of it because I knew the AI (or rather, the company behind it) was there to take all of my time and control me.

How in the world are young children supposed to navigate this? I do realize that Scratch is a non-profit, but you still quite directly risk exposing young children to these other intentionally controlling AIs. I have seen grown adults who allow themselves to get controlled by this sort of hyperconvenience and not even take a moment to question it. There are 7 year olds here. I fear that including an AI here would not just be annoying and saddening but could quietly ruin lives.
This is really a sad and shocking story, I totally agree.
The commercial AI products like ChatGPT are in fact built for making you engage with them more and more and boost over reliance. As a person who is interested in specific topics, I do see how the ChatGPT enforces patterns that feel “fun” and make you want to rely on it more. This is true for the commercial AI and really even more dangerous for children.

However. we can't blame this on the artificial intelligence itself but rather it's creators. For ChatGPT for example it is a commercial company that wants to of course make dependent customers and short-wire their brain to simply ask le gpt instead of enforcing them to think themselves and make free choice.
Here though comes the difference to Scratch Ai. This is because the Scratch AI is not created out of commercial interest, just like Scratch is a nonprofit. This AI is here to teach and help and not tom maximize user engagement, sell ads or opinions (if AIs do that which I doubt though). The AI in a scratch environment serves as a learning asistant that seriously takes itself the time to work thorugh your project, like a teacher, but you'd also have it aviable at home, it doesn't get tired or unmotivated of reading through a messy project and it always has time.
Because it is meant to be educational and a non commercial tool for working, the AI will not be implemented in a way that it does things for you and if it for example gives you an existent sprite from somewhere and advises you on how to implement it but you have to actually do that whilst it explains, then you learn something. It is not built to enforce dependence and vibe coding.

Yes, but I fear that Scratch having AI will make people more likely to look at other, for-profit AIs

pom_cookie

Rosics wrote:
pom_cookie wrote:
It's probably to please investors. Have you noticed more and more companies are adding AI in some way? It's because it's what investors want and makes them… well, invest. None of these companies care what customers think because they would lose more money if they didn't add AI and had investors leave than if they do add AI and customers leave.
scratch has no investors lol

Well, in Scratch's case, it would be people who pay for the membership and people who donate. They also might see the popularity of AI and how other companies use it and mistake it for something we want.

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