Chatbots are not people, and AI-produced spam doesn’t qualify as free speech. In addition, the @mods-general are not empowered by this to do anything more than they are already empowered to do by the Etiquette Guidelines and supporting documents; we’re merely streamlining the ability to declutter the forum of chatbot-produced and AI-produced spam without requiring all five members of the moderation team to vote. I should also point out that the moderation team usually (as in virtually always) acts after receiving complaints from members of the community about a post.
Furthermore, although I have not seen the full text of the decision, based on the brief messages available in the two public links, it seems that the decision has already been mostly made and is simply awaiting approval by the board—which makes me all the more concerned.
All documents related to guidelines for operation of and actions of the @mods-general are either posted to or linked from this page: Moderation team for talk and osmf-talk mailing lists - OpenStreetMap Foundation.