Valve blocks some AI-generated content on Steam — what you need to know

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AI-generated content in games is encouraged unless it steals someone else’s work

An image of a computer screen with the Steam logo on top of various steam game titles
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Online game store Steam won’t host games that use copyright-infringing AI artwork. However, overall AI technology that creates no copyright issues is being encouraged, according to a representative from parent company Valve.

Valve’s goal isn’t to discourage the use of AI on Steam and is instead “working through how to integrate it into [its] already-existing review policies”, the company's PR rep Kaci Boyle told The Verge in an email.

This issue cuts at the heart of one of the big talking points in the AI bubble: its relationship with copyright laws.

If one were to generalize, there are AI enthusiasts who see value in feeding existing works into models for them to pump out remixed versions of them. In the other camp, you’ve got your working artists and creators who’ve been dealing with industries exploiting them long before generative AI tools became so widely available.

Between April and May 2023, the U.S. Copyright Office organized listening sessions with writers, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers to hear their views on copyright issues arising from the use of AI. The office is facing challenging questions about the implications of models that train on large amounts of data created by people who haven’t necessarily consented to provide it to companies for free. The U.S. Copyright Office is set to publish the results of these discussions in the coming months.

Last week, a class action lawsuit was filed against ChatGPT creator OpenAI in a San Francisco federal court alleging that the company’s technology trained on texts “copied by OpenAI without consent, without credit, and without compensation.”

Over in the E.U., the European Parliament is pushing for new rules that would require AI models to publish summaries detailing their use of training data protected under copyright law.

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Christoph Schwaiger
Christoph Schwaiger

Christoph Schwaiger is a journalist, mainly covering technology, health, and current affairs. His stories have been published by Tom's Guide, Live Science, New Scientist, and the Global Investigative Journalism Network, among other outlets. Christoph has appeared on LBC and Times Radio. Additionally, he previously served as a National President for Junior Chamber International (JCI), a global leadership organization, and graduated cum laude from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands with an MA in journalism. You can follow him on X (Twitter) @cschwaigermt.