The legal challenges of generative AI | Opinion

gamesindustry.biz:

In case you haven't noticed, generative AI is having a bit of a moment right now.

Thanks largely to ChatGPT, it seems to have gone from a relatively niche area of interest to the popular mainstream in the space of just a few months. Its various implementations look set to dominate the tech headlines in 2023 and are fast becoming the flavour of the moment among venture capitalists.

We've seen tech goldrushes like this before: VR/AR, Web3, the Metaverse with a capital 'M'. Some of them end up needing a slower burn to get going, and others never really catch on (remember 3DTVs?). But what seems to set generative AI apart, and makes it feel more exciting, is its immediate and demonstrable use cases; not just in games but in a wide range of industries. It's a technology which doesn't suffer from being a solution which is looking for a problem to fix.

From recent conversations, it seems like everyone is experimenting with generative AI (largely behind closed doors, at this stage) and thinking about how it could fit into their processes. In the games industry, the potential use cases are many: art, music, code, level design, pitch/marketing materials and even internal documents like first drafts of job specs and business plans.

The speed at which new technologies become popularised often catches the law off guard, and there is a period of adaption as courts and law makers work out how they should deal with. This is happening with generative AI at the moment.

The position is complicated further by the fact that each country has its own laws and court decisions, which are all at different stages of dealing with the generative AI phenomenon. This is ill-fitting with the fact that most games are released on platforms that