Valve doesn’t have a problem with AI-generated games, but the law might

polygon.com:

As the game industry has begun to grapple with the advent of AI tools and AI-generated content, one question has risen to the fore in recent weeks: Would Valve, which operates Steam — the largest, and most liberal, online game store — publish games made with AI?

The question appeared to be answered by a post made on the aigamedev subreddit some weeks ago, which has been widely surfaced and reported on. The Reddit user said they had submitted a game to Steam with some “obviously AI-generated” placeholder art, and it was rejected. “We are declining to distribute your game since it’s unclear if the underlying AI tech used to create the assets has sufficient rights to the training data,” Valve reportedly said in an email to the developer, after they had improved (but not replaced) the art in question.

So, is Valve against the use of AI in the creation of games? No, not exactly — as you might expect from a company that often takes a neutral, not to say libertarian, stance on the content it distributes via Steam.

In a statement to Polygon, a Valve spokesperson clarified that the company has no wish to discourage the use of AI in game development, and indeed sees great potential in it. But it has concerns about the legal status of AI-generated art assets — considering the AI that made them may have been trained on data, including copyrighted art works, that doesn’t belong to the creator of the game. “Stated plainly, our review process is a reflection of current copyright law and policies, not an added layer of our opinion,” Valve said. “As these laws and policies evolve over time, so will our process.”

Here’s Valve’s statement in full:

We are continuing to learn about AI, the ways it can be used in game development, and how to