Players have been asking for the ability to filter out games made with Gen AI.
We've added an automatic tag on SteamDB based on the AI gen content disclosures on the store pages.
One can make the exact same argument by saying Open Source and it would be just as incorrect.
Ultimately, the actual time and effort of the artist is not being used when a Gen AI trained on his or her work generates an output, just like when an Open Source library is used in a program the time and effort of the programmers who made that library is not being used.
(As for the rest, that grand statement that users of Gen AI are “taking the energy the artist spent honing their craft” is just laughably exaggerated and detached from objective reality)
The problem with Gen AI as it’s being used now and the main difference to Open Source, is that with Open Source the programmer is in control of how works derived from their own freely distributed code are used, by means of which license they release their Open Source code under (so, for example, some licenses do not allow that code to be part of a commercially used or sold program, no matter how small a part that is, whilst others do), whilst the will of individual artists when it comes to their works being or not part of the training of Gen AI, and what kind of limits and uses are acceptable with the derived-via-Gen AI works based on their own art, is not taken into account much less respected.
It makes absolute sense that, like for programmers, some artists decide that none of their work or works works derived from it if free to distribute (so, no Gen AI), others decide that works can be derived from their own works but only for non-commercial use (i.e. can be used to train Gen AI as long as the output of that Gen AI is not used for commercial purposes) and yet others are ok with totally free use of automated derivations of their works.
That it isn’t so, is not a problem of Gen AI as a technology (though if the training inputs are hundreds of thousands of works, the equivalent of Free With Attribution licenses might be hard to pull off) but a problem of how Intellectual Property Law is either lacking or being misused.
One can make the exact same argument by saying Open Source and it would be just as incorrect.
Ultimately, the actual time and effort of the artist is not being used when a Gen AI trained on his or her work generates an output, just like when an Open Source library is used in a program the time and effort of the programmers who made that library is not being used.
(As for the rest, that grand statement that users of Gen AI are “taking the energy the artist spent honing their craft” is just laughably exaggerated and detached from objective reality)
The problem with Gen AI as it’s being used now and the main difference to Open Source, is that with Open Source the programmer is in control of how works derived from their own freely distributed code are used, by means of which license they release their Open Source code under (so, for example, some licenses do not allow that code to be part of a commercially used or sold program, no matter how small a part that is, whilst others do), whilst the will of individual artists when it comes to their works being or not part of the training of Gen AI, and what kind of limits and uses are acceptable with the derived-via-Gen AI works based on their own art, is not taken into account much less respected.
It makes absolute sense that, like for programmers, some artists decide that none of their work or works works derived from it if free to distribute (so, no Gen AI), others decide that works can be derived from their own works but only for non-commercial use (i.e. can be used to train Gen AI as long as the output of that Gen AI is not used for commercial purposes) and yet others are ok with totally free use of automated derivations of their works.
That it isn’t so, is not a problem of Gen AI as a technology (though if the training inputs are hundreds of thousands of works, the equivalent of Free With Attribution licenses might be hard to pull off) but a problem of how Intellectual Property Law is either lacking or being misused.