Minecraft's creator went from 'reject AI' to vibe coding

Swedish video game programmer and designer Markus Persson spent the first half of 2026 telling anyone who'd listen that AI coding was a mistake. By August, the Minecraft creator known as Notch was sharing his own AI chat logs and admitting it might be "time to eat some crow."

He called for the use of AI to program as "an incredibly bad idea" back in January, adding that "anyone supporting such an idea is either incompetent or evil." His view at the time was that programming had nothing to do with typing but all to do with logic.

This follows the revelation made by Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, that about 30% of their codes were generated by artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, also mentioned about 20-30% of the same.

Earlier this year, when the Twitter handle of Mojang co-founder Jakob Porsér was hacked and used to promote AI programming, Persson took this to be proof of this hype being "falsely inflated."

By mid-July, he was still just as firm, posting a two-word verdict: "Reject AI."

Later that same month, Persson admitted he'd been struggling to hire talented programmers and reasoned he'd feel less guilty firing a chatbot than a person. Within days, he was already finding real use cases for Claude, half-joking about whether he could still mock vibe coders after becoming one himself.

He himself has been quite honest about the contradiction within his stand, admitting that his early opposition was an act of suppression and not a logically thought-out attitude. After a person said that it was depressing for him to use artificial intelligence in building games, Persson admitted that he tried to retain the base of his uniqueness in this way.