This is the journal's policy on LLM use by authors [1]:

> LLMs may be used as general-purpose assistive tools. Whichever tools are used, authors are fully responsible for content on which they are listed as (co-) authors. This includes, but is not limited to, content generated by LLMs that could be construed as plagiarism or scientific misconduct (e.g., fabrication of facts). Low-quality contributions (be they submissions or reviews) that appear to be largely LLM-generated will be closely examined for evidence of the issues mentioned previously, such as scientific misconduct. LLMs are not eligible for authorship. We will periodically revise this policy as new information about the use of LLMs in the scientific process becomes available.

While it doesn't outright encourage using LLMs, it's right at the door, and IMO a policy this weak is actively contributing to the problem the article's author is complaining about. In my opinion any policy weaker than "using LLMs to generate any part of your submission is not allowed and considered a serious breach of ethics" is insane. People like to say that such policies are unenforceable, but that's really not the point (at first), since there are other things like (somewhat ironically) p-hacking that are pretty hard to detect but still widely recognized as unethical. We haven't exactly solved p-hacking either, but at least most of us can agree that p-hacking should be eliminated.

It's hard for me not to read between the lines here. Maybe it's the tinfoil talking, but it being a machine-learning journal, it probably embodies a generally pro-AI philosophy, and thus may not want to discourage too much of it...

It may also be worth noting that this journal apparently uses AI itself on the reviewing side [2]. I'm not claiming this is super unethical or anything as long as the main review is human (although I have concerns), it probably should be part of the conversation.

[1]: https://jmlr.org/tmlr/editorial-policies.html

[2]: https://medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ai-reviews-at-tmlr-for-assessing...