This includes "asking" the question to an AI generator then copy-pasting its output as well as using an AI generator to "reword" your answers.

Please see the Help Center article: What is this site’s policy on content generated by generative artificial intelligence tools?

Overall, because the average rate of getting correct answers from ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies is too low, the posting of content created by ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies is substantially harmful to the site and to users who are asking questions and looking for correct answers.

The primary problem is that while the answers which ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies produce have a high rate of being incorrect, they typically look like the answers might be good and the answers are very easy to produce. There are also many people trying out ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies to create answers, without the expertise or willingness to verify that the answer is correct prior to posting. Because such answers are so easy to produce, a large number of people are posting a lot of answers. The volume of these answers (thousands) and the fact that the answers often require a detailed read by someone with significant subject matter expertise in order to determine that the answer is actually bad has effectively swamped our volunteer-based quality curation infrastructure.

As such, we need to reduce the volume of these posts and we need to be able to deal with the ones which are posted quickly, which means dealing with users, rather than individual posts.

So, the use of ChatGPT or other generative AI technologies to create posts or other content here on Stack Overflow is not permitted. If a user is believed to have used ChatGPT or other generative AI technologies after the posting of this policy, sanctions will be imposed to prevent them from continuing to post such content, even if the posts would otherwise be acceptable.

NOTE: While the above text focuses on answers, because that's where we're experiencing the largest volume of such content, the ban applies to all content on Stack Overflow, except each user's profile content (e.g., your "About me" text).

Historical context of this ban originally being "temporary"

When this ban was originally posted on 2022-12-05, it was explicitly stated as a "Temporary policy". It was specifically "temporary", because it was, at that time, a policy which was being imposed by the subset of moderators who were present on the site over the weekend after the announcement of ChatGPT's public release, 2022-11-30, through the Monday, 2022-12-05, when this question was posted. The moderators involved strongly felt that we didn't have the right to impose a permanent policy in this manner upon the site, but did have a responsibility to impose a temporary policy that was necessary in order for the site to remain functioning while discussion was had, consensus reached, and also allowed Stack Overflow, the company, time to have internal discussions to see what policies they would adopt network wide. So, after consultation with the company, the moderators present at that time chose to implement this as a "temporary" policy.

Since then, quite a lot has happened. Based on the voting for this question, it's clear that there's an overwhelming consensus for this policy. The company has chosen that the specific policy on AI-generated content will be up to individual sites (list of per-site policies), but that even on sites which permit AI-generated content, such AI-generated content is considered "not your own work" and must follow the referencing requirements. The requirement for following the referencing requirements was, later, put into the Code of Conduct: Inauthentic usage policy. There's a lot more that's gone on with respect to AI-generated content. So much has happened such that it's not reasonable to try to summarize all of it here.

1. ChatGPT is an Artificial Intelligence based chat bot by OpenAI, which was announced on 2022-11-30. Use of ChatGPT is currently available to the public without monetary payment.