diff --git a/scripts/generate_authors.py b/scripts/generate_authors.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..4304b67f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/scripts/generate_authors.py
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+#!/usr/bin/python
+
+"""Re-generate the AUTHORS file based on the commits made."""
+
+import subprocess
+from collections import Counter
+
+commits = subprocess.check_output(['git', 'log', '--format=%aN'])
+cnt = Counter(commits.decode('utf-8').splitlines())
+
+with open('AUTHORS', 'w', newline='\n', encoding='utf-8') as f:
+    f.write("Contributors, sorted by the number of commits in descending "
+            "order:\n\n")
+    for author in sorted(cnt, key=lambda k: cnt[k]):
+        f.write(author)
+    f.write('\n')
diff --git a/scripts/generate_authors.sh b/scripts/generate_authors.sh
deleted file mode 100755
index 78f4821c3..000000000
--- a/scripts/generate_authors.sh
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,9 +0,0 @@
-#!/bin/bash
-
-# Inspired by herbstluftwm.
-
-cat > AUTHORS  <<EOF
-Contributors, sorted by the number of commits in descending order:
-
-$(git log   --format="%aN" | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | sed 's/^[ ]*[^ ]*[ ]*//')
-EOF