Valve is the company behind the popular online game platform Steam, one of the biggest gatekeepers of games on the internet.
Following the hype of AIs, and how developers can use the technology to help them create assets for games, Valve is taking a preventive step, and said that games with copyrighted AI artworks won't be published on the platform.
Developers first began to realize this, when developer shared their experience on Reddit post about being rejected by Valve due to using AI-generated artworks.
Shortly after this, more developers shared that they also experienced the same thing.
Another developer who also shared their experience on Reddit, discussed how Valve requested evidence of their ownership rights for the artwork generated by an AI algorithm.
According to the developer, Valve stated that they could not release the game with AI-generated assets, unless the developer could confirm ownership of the intellectual property used to train the AI.
The developer attempted to manually modify the AI-generated artwork, in order to remove "any obvious signs of AI," but Valve still rejected the application.
Ultimately, Valve rejected the game, and gave the developer no further chances for resubmission.
The rejection message said that the developer's game "contains art assets generated by artificial intelligence that appears to be relying on copyrighted material owned by third parties."
"I didn't even realize AI art was not allowed, as I'd heard of it being used, and even seen a few fairly obvious examples myself," the developer wrote in the comment thread below their initial post.
The developer that goes with the name Potterharry97, admitted that "a large portion of the assets" were indeed create by AI, and that the AI in use was Stable Diffusion.
It's only later, that the response from Valve appears to be a standard policy.
Valve’s developer submission rules stated that developers are not allowed to post "content you don’t own or have adequate rights to."
"As the legal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear, we cannot ship your game while it contains these AI-generated assets," Valve's message continued, "unless you can affirmatively confirm that you own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in your game."
In an emailed statement, Valve spokesperson Kaci Boyle said the company’s goal 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 added that the company is reviewing the process it takes, and that "while developers can use these AI technologies in their work... they can not infringe on existing copyrights."
Boyle added that Steam shall refund app-submission credits for any developers whose games were rejected over AI copyright issues, as the company refines its review process.
The emergence of AI has added a new reason for discussions about copyright, adding further complicated dimensions to existing discussions.
The technology led to lawsuits over things like uncredited open source code usage and infringement of copyrighted artwork, and Valve's aggressive policy surrounding AI-created assets isn’t too much of a surprise.
As many people, artists in particular, are upset that AI is learning from their creations and producing images, music, and more, without having the right to do so, Valve as one of the largest platforms for games, is taking note of this trend.
Since there is also concerns that AI will be able to replace humans, causing them to become unemployed, Valve is making sure that artists are also credited for their work.
And because it's certain that AI technology will continue to advance, and as a result, Valve believes that the use of AI-generated assets could compromise the overall quality of games on Steam, and ultimately ruin competition.