"Gain trust through plausible contributions" is a new angle on AI-produced PRs I haven't seen yet.

Though in retrospect we should have seen it. It's been an angle of attack since forever, it only took a lot of effort.

isn't linux-kernel-development operating on exactly the same model since forever ?

Someone mentioned sqlite in a comment. It's a better comparison IMO.

Also, Linux has many more people, many of whom basically just review code.