Legal obstacles to the use of AI in games – 07/12/2023 – Tech

This is the edition of Combo, the Folha’s games newsletter. Do you want to receive it every Tuesday in your email? Sign up below.

Games built with the help of AI (artificial intelligence) are being banned on Steam, considered the largest virtual game store in the world. The measures were taken by Valve, owner of the store, due to “legal uncertainties” about the use of this technology in games, mainly in relation to copyright.

Please note

Valve has already taken similar action with games on “blockchain” or that use NFTs. These games were on the rise in 2021 and early 2022, but they have lost much of their prestige since the market adopted AI as the technology of fashion.

What does Valve say?

“The introduction of AI [no desenvolvimento de games] it can sometimes make it more difficult to demonstrate that a developer has sufficient rights to use AI in creating some elements, including images, text and music. In particular, there is legal uncertainty relating to the data used to train AI models,” the company said in a statement sent to GamesIndustry.biz.

Like this?

AI is a way to mimic human intelligence and the human learning process in machines. One of the techniques that helped drive this technology is called “machine learning”. Here, the computer examines large data sets to detect patterns in the information, which it can then reproduce and recombine in other ways.

In this way, if an AI used to create a game is “trained” with a database that includes elements that do not belong to the game developers, it is possible that it generates content copied from third parties, which could lead to lawsuits for plagiarism or breach of copyright.

More questions than answers

“Everyone is still in their infancy”, says Vanessa Lerner, a partner at Dias Carneiro Advogados who has been advising companies in the games sector for ten years. “In the United States, the Copyright Office issued an opinion saying that items created by an AI would in principle not be copyrighted, but this is still being evaluated.”

late Brazil

If even in the United States this issue is still uncertain, in Brazil the situation is even worse. Lerner recalls that Brazil’s copyright legislation dates back to 1998 and was already out of date with regard to regulating digital content. When we enter the field of AI, legal uncertainty is total.

“This insecurity makes the use of technology unfeasible for small developers. A large company, in general, is more willing to take risks, but a small company simply cannot”, says Lerner.

Tips for your robot

• Know where your database comes from. To avoid problems, Lerner advises that developers know where the content that was used to train the AI ​​comes from. “When you’re gathering information to feed the AI, you need to make sure that information can actually be used for that purpose.”

• Check the generated content. It is important to make sure that the content produced is really original. “It takes a very clear assessment of the content being generated to make sure it’s really new and not based on terms that are still binding on previous content,” says Lerner.

• Be transparent. Finally, the lawyer recommends that the developer inform users if they are going to interact with an AI. “We know that this new technology is not necessarily known by the players. So a great job of transparency is needed so that they understand exactly what they are participating in.”

---

play

game tip, new or old, for you to test

Rogue Legacy 2

(PC, Switch, PS 4/5, Xbox One/X/S)

Released in April 2022 for PCs and Xbox consoles, this great action/platform game mixes elements of “Metroidvania” (similar to the “Metroid” and “Castlevania” series) and “roguelike” only arrived last month on PlayStation consoles. In each life, the player faces a labyrinth full of monsters with a hero with different skills and characteristics, leaving behind the gold and improvements gained for the next generation. This mechanic creates an addictive gameplay loop that is hard to put down.

---

update

news, launches, business and what matters most

• An annual report published by Nintendo found that only 4.2% of managers working in its offices in Japan are women, highlighted the website Axios. Still according to the document, women receive on average 72% of men’s salary.

• Nintendo denies that there is a difference in the treatment of men and women in the company and attributes the numbers to the longevity of its employees at work (average of 14.3 years).

• Yuji Naka, one of the co-creators of Sonic the Hedgehog, was sentenced in Japan to two and a half years in prison and a fine of 173 million yen (R$ 6 million), said the VGC website. He pleaded guilty to trading stocks with insider trading, a practice known as “insider trading”, and could serve his sentence on parole.

• IO Interactive, responsible for the latest games in the “Hitman” franchise, announced the opening of a new studio in Brighton, England. Suggestively, the English studio will work on the new spy game 007.

• EA has already announced the creation of the Cliffhanger Games studio, based in Seattle. The new company will develop the publisher’s flagship games and is currently working on a third-person adventure game based on Marvel’s Black Panther hero.

• The BIG Festival received more than 50,000 visitors over the five days of this year’s event, a record for the festival according to its organizers. Next year’s edition will take place from the 26th to the 30th of June, again at Expo São Paulo, in the south zone of the city of São Paulo.

• The New York Times has begun testing the inclusion of ads in Wordle, one of its most popular games. According to Axios, advertisements appear for users who do not subscribe to the newspaper’s gaming platform.

• Rockstar’s “GTA V” game has returned to Microsoft’s subscription gaming service, Xbox Game Pass. The title is already available in the version for consoles and in the cloud. On the 18th, the service will also receive “The Cave”, a lesser-known title by Ron Gilbert, one of the creators of the (yes, famous) series “Monkey Island”.

---

download

games that will be released in the next few days and promotions that are worthwhile

July 12

“Mordhaus”: R$ 159.95 (Xbox One/X/S), price not available (PS 4/5)

“Oxenfree II: Lost Signals”: BRL 75.93 (Switch), BRL 104.90 (PS 4/5), price not available (PC, iOS, Android)

July 13

“Gravity Circuit”: R$ 38.99 (Switch), price not available (PC, PS 4/5)

July 14

“Exoprimal”: BRL 249* (PC, Xbox One/X/S), BRL 279.50 (PS 4/5)

July 18

“Viewfinder”: price not available (PC, PS 5)

“Techtone”: price not available* (PC, Xbox One/X/S)

*Available on Xbox Game Pass