Valve appear to be not willing to publish games with AI generated content
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Valve quietly not publishing games that contain AI generated content if the submitters can't prove they own the rights to the assets the AI was trained on
It just seems Valve wants to avoid the legal minefield that is AI art, so the stance they take is just not allowing such things until there is legal precedent and with the advancing field I imagine something will occur within the next 5-10 years (if not in the next year or so). We can question the ethics of AI art and the commercialization of it but things do get a bit murky when we try to shove AI art/AI generative tools into a singular box. It would be like I insinuate that a selfie portrait is in any way comparable to a higher forms of photography like the "Saigon Execution", it would be downright insulting to have a photo that embodied many people's feelings of the Vietnam war in such a macabre photo to someone doing fucking duck lips at a black mirror for updoots or what the fuck ever people do selfies for. It seems rather unrealistic to say the process of using generative AI poisons the well (even though some argue it should) but where do we draw the line, doing touch up or drawing over it in a photo manipulation software does that make its own original work now? Like said don't know until there is legal precedent.
Yeah, given the shit that they allow on their platforms that is barely or not at all working asset flips, the only reason they're doing this is the legal risk.
Some of the AI generated upscaling has been fantastic, especially some of the generative images that I've seen for game assets (such as dynamically creating rusty metal or overgrown bushes).
It's a bit of a minefield right now but that type of improvement definitely has a place in game dev, especially when the demand on indie devs gets higher each year.
yeah video games is something Im really excited to have ai in. Im actually hoping old games can refactor to a newer engine with a small enough team to be worth it.
Not that AI should be treated with the same rights and dignity a person, but is this not a sort of double standard? I mean, do they publish games with art made by humans who learned from works the human artists did not own?
Based on the language from Valve, it sounds more like legal protection for themselves than a judgment from an ethical perspective.
Your question isn't a bad one, but the battleground over copyright ownership probably isn't one they're weighing in on here.
I think I'm starting to understand... If I go to an art gallery that allows photos, take some photos, and share them with a friend who is learning to be an artist, that seems to be generally ok and does not feel unethical. But if I take those photos to an underground sweatshop and use it to train a thousand people who are mass producing art for corporate use, that seems wrong.
If I think of the AI as a human analog, then I have trouble seeing the problem with it learning from the same resources as humans, but if I see it as a factory then I see the problem.
And that's why the companies behind these algorithms are so intent on selling the lie that it's "revolutionary human-like artificial intelligence" and not just a plagiarism algorithm regurgitating a mashup of the work it was fed.
If a human artist learned by copying paintings, they still create original work. An AI simply copies.
Yeah, algorithmically copying one's style with out permission isn't the same thing as a human mirroring art. It's not a skill.
You can create art with AI for sure but it's nothing but a tool (at least for now). And it's unethical to use art without permission in this context where it literally algorithmically copies the material.
If an AI simply copies, it should be easy as pie to tell me what artist they copied here.
If someone told me a human drew this, I would believe them. Looks original as anything else people have made.
Describe the criteria you use to determine whether something is "creation".
I mean, do they publish games with art made by humans who learned from works the human artists did not own?
You know plagiarism is a word right? Artists/Writers still strive to have a style unique to themselves....
Every day my love for valve grows stronger
The ignorance here about how AIs work is staggeringly high, almost as high as the confidence with which some users lecture based on their own beliefs.
Good. Until a studio can point to a known-dataset that isn't just ripping art illegally from sources they don't have the rights to use then it's just not worth the risk.
It's not 100% unrealistic that large studios like Blizzard and Riot (who have very clear styles that "work well" with AI generation weirdness) will eventually have huge in-house datasets that they own since it's all created under the umbrella of their employees and contractors who already sign away all the rights when they make content for the games they're working on. But until that happens, it's so obviously a red flag / great area that Valve's move is just a no-brainer.
When I learned to play Piano, I did so by playing music I did not have the rights to and that was fine. I could take my learned skills and even use it commercially. If an AI does the same, its suddenly a bad thing.
Good.
@birlocke What about AI generated programming code from Github Copilot (or other similar tools)?
Haven’t procedurally generated maps been a part of gaming for a long time now?
Procedural generation is not the same thing as assets created by "AI" tools. Procedural generation still has to use proprietary assets created or owned by the devs.
I think OP made it pretty clear:
if the submitters can't prove they own the rights to the assets the AI was trained on
I would also say that hopefully gamedevs are designing/tweaking their own procedural generation too. Though I won't disagree that lazy procedural content can/has been used for shovelware (and in a wider sense, filler). But I would say that AI can take that to a whole new level, and one that may fool some people on the surface (like having a really high-quality asset pack that can't easily be pointed out).
Or worse when they can use AI to pump out content with even less effort than before. For an example, the new wave of (likely all related) fake science video spam channels on YT that are a step above older tactics (like a low-quality Text-to-Speech voice reading an existing article).
(on the other side of the coin, you can still use AI as a tool that is no longer turn-key... but I suspect in instances like that the artist would/should be able to prove that with their workflow steps. Then again, that probably doesn't cut it as Valve likely means no tainted training data can be used even if original art was added in some way)
I really hope that lawmakers and AI companies can clear this up soon, because I think AI art could be a massive thing for gaming. In particular by generating small variances so that the world doesn't feel so copy paste.
For example, consider a map with a large office building (like in the game Control). There's so many assets needed to avoid feeling copy paste. You'll notice if the game reuses the contents of whiteboards, which isn't realistic. In real offices, we can expect every single whiteboard will likely have different contents (with the exception of blank ones). They probably will have lots in common, but they wouldn't be exactly the same. A human creating dozens of hundreds of unique whiteboards isn't a very good use of time, especially if we're talking about one of many minor assets that aren't even meant to be paid close attention to. An AI, on the other hand, could generate the many variations we'd expect to see. We can even have a human design a couple and ask the AI to make similar ones.
This isn't even all that new. We've had procedural generation (which is not AI) of stuff like height maps and trees for ages now. But we're finally able to generate entire textures (and perhaps eventually entire 3D models) very easily and while fitting into a specific theme.
Finally, for indie games, developing art can be a major challenge. There's countless programmers who want to make games and are good programmers, but they're not good artists. AI generated art could help make being a one person dev more viable. And even when the dev is an artist, it could simply save them a lot of time on what's a very time consuming part of game dev. eg, AI would be good at generating the profile pictures of characters that RPGs often show during dialogue.
won't last, before long all games will have some elements of ai generated content
Until the first commercial title gets sued and then publishers won't touch any game with AI generated content
Not likely.
Studios could and probably will train their own AI models to avoid legal trouble and achieve custom results.
Beyond AI generated textures, I think it's just a matter of time before AI generated maps, NPCs, game mechanics, etc. become commonplace.
Though, I suspect there will be actual companies that train completely on data they have legally purchased that then sell it legally to other companies. They greyzone of not knowing if or how much art was taken without permission is the issue at hand.
Based beyond belief.
Let the market decide. If Valve doesn’t provide them a sales avenue, another party will. Many don’t comprehend yet is that AI generation is entirely user-driven. Without hundreds of refinements, you would only receive the most generic output. As for copyright infringement, what exactly is being violated here? When we use material X or Y to generate an original output Z, how does that infringe upon any rights? It doesn’t. Rather, it highlights that people need to adapt and evolve. The sooner this realization sets in, the better. The calligraphers and and book artisans went through this ordeal so will they.
unfettered capitalism has not, and will not work except for those already at the top.
As for copyright infringement, what exactly is being violated here?
Intellectual property of the original art creators? OP says "unlicensed", if you take any piece of art someone else created, and you use it to make your own stuff without their authorization, you're committing a crime.
Rather, it highlights that people need to adapt and evolve.
And risk being sued? Valve is right in being wary of this, especially since there's no real regulation about it.
Let's have regulations first, then we can tell people to adapt.
if you take any piece of art someone else created, and you use it to make your own stuff without their authorization, you're committing a crime.
This is not accurate. No art is made in a vacuum; all artists are influenced by other art. That's even before we bring in fair use, which may or may not apply depending on specifics.
Copyright does not restrict who/what can be trained on copyrighted works. That's just not a real thing. It's becoming an issue because AI is rapidly becoming "good enough" that human artists are worried they will be replaced, so they're scrambling to find a way to hold back technology. This happens every time a new technology is used in reference to media. Every. Single. Time. It never works.
Valve is part of the market, that they can decide what can be and can't be on their plattform is part of the market deciding.
I would like to see re-releases of games with textures upscaled using AI upscalers. Nobody is going to go back and scale these up by hand, but with computer assistance, it might be viable.
With upscaled images, you can prove who owned the original images, which is fine.
Why are people so much against AI?
It takes jobs away? As every progress humankind has made in history.
It copies artists styles? As artist already do. Artists always copy other artists, it's how art work since forever.
It copies other people's code? As coders already do. People copy blobs of code without understanding it all the time.
It produces less quality products? It depends on the people using it as with every other tool. People can produce shitty art and incredibly good art with the same tool, ex: ma paint.
I just don't get it. It reminds me so much to the beginning of digital art and people complaining about it, saying physically made art was the only real art.
As for myself I can't wait for AI to get even better. I have so many ideas about what me, or others could made with it. It's a tool with so much potential to throw it away out of fear.
It copies artists styles? As artist already do. Artists always copy other artists, it’s how art work since forever.
What AI does is take artists' hard work and directly uses it to generate something using their style(s), without their permission.
Artist do that too. Haven't you notice that most popular songs sound very familiar to each other? And I assure you they do not ask for each other permission either. AI may do things faster, automatically and lower the skill requirements for the user but doesn't do anything artists weren't already doing.
The AI Revolution is going to be on the scale of the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions in terms of change. People, on a whole, do not like change since it means uncertainty. Uncertainty about their careers as you mentioned, but also uncertainty about our very nature. We all like to think we are special, unique, and the pinnacle of life. If a computer can not only do what we do, but faster and better, than what does that make us?
That is why people are so adamant in trying to say AI cannot create art. Art is the one thing humans have over all other known forms of life and if we lose that... like I said: what does that make us?
They should prepare for invasion of patent trolls who claim to have right of arts included in AI model.
That sounds like a positive thing as a way to verify that the content was designed by humans, but concerning that AI has any input at all, unless it's for finding issues with the gameplay mechanics and nothing to do with game designing.
Possible, with AI the single player campaigns might closer to playing with real people but AI can never duplicate human behaviour and instinct, only imitate it.
I'm not sure this is to ensure the content is made by humans, that isn't the goal. Valve just wants to ensure that the game dev owns the rights of the content created for the game. Using AI, you can still own the rights in some scenario's as long as the AI doesn't use inputs that it doesn't have the rights to.
This is a very good development, it ensures that creators and owners of content are safeguarded, while at the same time ensuring that gamers get fresh and new content.
I have to agree here. Generative AI has so much potential for games. Especially RPG style games for believable NPC characters. But the rights environment is very murky.
I expect it to be resolved relatively soon though. a combination of generally trained AI with subject specific training should do the trick. In the same way we would train a helpdesk bot on company specific information.
The remaining question though is what of the original broad dataset the source model was trained on. There things are less clear.
Is this just AI art? Or if you had AI npcs or something like that would it also be blocked?
It's solely about legal issues if your AI has been trained on unlicensed data (Midjourney, Playground AI, etc.). We don't really have laws that handle these cases yet, so valve wants to err on the save side.
Everything else is still allowed. Even AI is still allowed if it's trained on your own (or licensed) data.
And that's pretty clearly how it should be.
the submitters can’t prove they own the rights to the assets the AI was trained on
this is VERY good to hear, honestly
a lot of AI's are training on seemingly random info that belongs to various people.
not just images, but books, movies etc.
Seems like sensibly covering their asses given that it's still legally grey (read: noone has brought a significant enough court case) so I wouldn’t be surprised to see more opinions like this start to pop up from various big media hosts.
