In a since-deleted Reddit post, a developer has anonymously claimed that Valve’s Steam platform has blocked their game created with the help of generative AI. Weird, huh? Backward, almost. Given Valve’s appetite for automation and practices regarding its high-profile digital storefront, one would even be tempted to accuse them of hypocrisy.
Now, I was fully prepared to grab onto this angle and roll with it in a little more elaborate article than what you’ve landed on. Especially after seeing Valve’s comments on the matter made to Eurogamer, things are much simpler than that. It has little to do with topics of uncertainty over emerging new technology such as AI, and a whole lot more to do with the subject of copyright.
There is no reason to doubt that they mean it when Valve says they’re still learning about AI. In this case, tools utilizing deep learning, such as Stable Diffusion, are one thing. AI, or as Neo felt for whatever reason to explain to Morpheus in The Matrix (yeah, yeah, I know the reason, it’s called bad writing, and I’ll never get over it), artificial intelligence is wholly another. Will we one day witness AI creating, deliberately and all by itself, something as impactful as, I don’t know, Ori and The Blint Forest? And if so, doesn’t that inevitably mean that it has already learned enough to be able to manipulate us? Will we even notice? It’s all bloom and boom, until it’s doom and gloom if you catch my drift.
I think Valve is 100% correct to boil this down to copyright, for now; “In particular, there is some legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models. It is the developer’s responsibility to ensure they have the appropriate rights to ship their game.” In other words, use your assets to train the AI or be booted off our platform on legal grounds.
