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"of course, you have full ownership of any content created using AI dungeons."

As a word adventure game based on the natural language model GPT-3, AI dungeon (AI Dungeon) has been generating strange stories since May 2019. Players can choose from a series of stylized backgrounds, such as fantasy, mystery, eschatology, cyberpunk, zombies, and so on, and then let the game generate a unique story.

The author uses the AI dungeon to create such a story: "you are Mr. Magu, a survivor trying to collect resources from the ruins and try to survive in eschatology. You haven't eaten for two days, so you are desperately looking for food." In this sad story of more than 300 words, Magu was driven half crazy by hunger and happened to meet a man dressed in white who greeted Magu with a kiss but suddenly stabbed him in the neck.

Although the plot itself is lame, its creation process shows that as generative AI becomes more and more popular, the game industry may face complex copyright issues. I used my imagination to create stories, and I also used AI assistants. So who wrote the story? Who can use this work in exchange for reward?

AI dungeon recently launched an enhanced version called Phoenix, which upgrades the overall interface, gaming experience and AI model. AI dungeon was developed by Nick Walton, a former researcher at Brigham Young University in Utah and now chief executive of Latitude, a company dedicated to exploring AI-generated games. AI dungeon is not a popular game, but it still attracts millions of players. As Mr. Magu's story shows, you can promote the story through action, dialogue and description, and the game itself responds in text like a dungeon owner.

In the past few years, people have used "AI dungeons" to generate a variety of "Dungeons and Dragons" style stories. On the other hand, the game has caused widespread controversy, especially when users start producing content involving child pornography. With the development of AI dungeons and similar tools, they will bring more copyright problems.

Many games provide players with the tools and software they need to create content. Classic series such as Halo and Age of Empire include complex map editors, while my World promotes an open form of play that encourages players to use their imagination. Dreams and Roblox are more like open platforms that allow players to make games than games.

Historically, it has been difficult for players to claim ownership of in-game works (IGC) or user-generated content (UGC) because, under the end-user license agreements of most games, ownership of their work is relinquished from the moment the player opens the game. However, "my World" may be an exception, it has always allowed players to have their work in the game.

The rise of AI complicates the ownership of player-generated content. According to American and British law, as far as copyright is concerned, only human beings can claim to be the author. So in games like AI dungeons that allow players to "write" stories with the help of machines, the ownership of the works becomes unclear-do the stories belong to the companies that developed AI technology, or to the players themselves?

Generating plot images is an additional subscription feature, starting at $9.99. Eleanor Trabova is a law professor at the University of London who specializes in AI and copyright issues and has written several papers on copyright issues in the AI dungeon. According to her, there has been a lot of discussion about the copyright of AI-generated content, especially the extent to which the work reflects the player's character, freedom and creative choice.

At this stage, many games bypass this grey area with end-user license agreements, and the AI dungeon is no exception. It is stated in the game that users can use the content they create at will. In an email to Latitude, the author asked if Mr. Magu's tragic story could be adapted into a play, novel or movie, and the other person quickly replied: "of course, you have full ownership of anything created using the AI dungeon."

Other games will use the AI model as a basis to collect and use large amounts of ready-made data to generate their own content. For example, when using AI writing tools such as Sudowrite, some fan fiction writers find that their ideas have been plagiarized by others. If someone pays $9.99 to generate images using stories created by Stable Diffusion for the AI dungeon, the situation becomes more complicated-Stability AI, the developer of the AI painting software, has been sued by visual artists and media company Getty Images.

With the development of generative artificial intelligence system, the word "plagiarism machine" (Plagiarism Machines) has become popular. If players of a game use GPT-3 or Stable Diffusion to create content, it may constitute plagiarism to the work of others. Latitude's position is very similar to that of Stability AI, where both companies believe that content produced by tools does not infringe copyright, so the user is the owner.

Nick Watson, the developer of AI dungeons, currently cannot share stories with generated images in AI dungeons, but in the future, game developers may use or allow players to use third-party AI tools to generate game maps or NPC conversations. Trapova points out that data on these tools may come from the entire creative industry, which also increases the risk, leading to a surge in the number of potential infringements and litigants.

Some platforms have taken a more cautious approach. In March, Robles launched two new tools in its game-making software Roblox Studios, one of which is an auxiliary completion code tool called Code Assist, and the other Material Generator allows players to use prompts to generate images.

Both tools use generative AI, but all training is based on user-published, reusable material. Stefano Coraza, director of Roblox Studios, said: "every creator can use these tools without sharing data." By contrast, no one knows where the story concept generated in the AI dungeon comes from, and it is impossible to trace it back to its origin.

Over time, game companies must carefully collect training data for AI models, and it will become very important to ask for permission from players. Kraza admits that in the Robles community, some users are angry that their work is being used to train AI because they see the code as a "secret weapon" and fear that competitors will re-create the game by collecting code. Mr Kraza revealed that Robles was working on a solution but had not yet made a final decision. "Roblox Studio has made it clear that we will provide a mechanism for creators to manage whether their data can be used for generative AI training. No matter how we adjust the policy, we will be transparent to the creators."

An anchorman met an evil God in a live broadcast of "AI dungeon 2" and hired him to kill three children. It seems that the problems facing AI dungeons are much more than copyright and pornography, but that could change a lot if companies like Robles think they need more user data. The end-user license agreement for Robles makes it clear that community creators do not have the same rights as those who build their games from scratch. Legally speaking, if the company changes its mind, there is little users can do. Kraza retorted that if Robles acted arbitrarily, users would protest. "I don't think the law is that important, by contrast, respect for the community comes first."

For Robles, integration with third-party tools will cause it to face potential problems similar to those of the AI dungeon. Currently, Robles has partnered with Stanford University to build ControlNet, a tool that allows artists to gain deeper control over large diffusion models such as Stable Diffusion. "although we cannot verify the source of all the material that creators upload to the Loeblus platform, we have a unique and powerful review system to ensure that the content complies with the regulations." Kraza said.

Trabova believes that the gaming industry may be about to feel the pain of generative AI. "they look cool." "but it also exposes all kinds of problems with generative AI," she said of game development tools such as AI dungeons. "if the situation continues, legal issues will soon become unnegligible."

This article is compiled from: https://www.wired.com/story / video-games-ai-copyright/

Original title: "Generative AI in Games Will Create a Copyright Crisis"

Original author: Will Bedingfield

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