Several outlets reported on Thursday that Steam would no longer be publishing games using AI-generated material, citing a June Reddit post by user potterharry97. Later that month, another game developer made a similar statement. Valve claims this is incorrect.
Valve PR representative Kaci Boyle said in an email to The Verge that the company’s purpose is “not to discourage the use of [AI] on Steam; instead, we’re working through how to integrate it into our already-existing review policies.” She continued, saying that the company’s current approval procedure takes current copyright law into consideration, adding that “while developers can use these AI technologies in their work… they cannot infringe on existing copyrights.”
As the business refines its review process, Steam will reimburse app-submission credits to any developers whose games were rejected due to AI copyright problems, according to Boyle. The similar offer was made to potterharry97.
The developer submission criteria at Valve prohibit “content you don’t own or have adequate rights to.” In their post, Potterharry97 provided the rejection statement, which stated that their game “contains art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties.”
The emergence of artificial intelligence has brought a new, difficult dimension to disputes about copyright. The move has resulted in lawsuits over things like uncredited open source code usage and infringement of copyrighted artwork, therefore Valve’s tough attitude regarding AI-created content isn’t surprising.
To learn more about the lawsuit’s reasons and reasoning, we chatted with Butterick (MB), Manfredi (TM), and Zirpoli (CZ), who described why they believe we’re in the Napster era of AI and why allowing Microsoft to exploit other people’s code without acknowledgment might kill the open source movement.