Valve has clarified its position and policies surrounding AI-generated game content through a blog posted to the Steam Community forums.
The Washington-based company’s Steam app and store is home to one of the market’s largest selections of PC games.
After spending the last few months reviewing and learning about AI technology and talking with game developers, Valve says it would change its guidelines regarding how it handles games that use AI technology.
Valve will update the content survey developers fill out when submitting their games to Steam. The survey will now include an AI disclosure section, requiring developers to describe how they used AI in the development process of their games. Valve has made two AI categories to separate the different types of AI usage during game development.
The first category is pre-generated AI content, which is any asset created with the help of AI tools and software, such as art and sound. Developers must “promise Valve that your game will not include illegal or infringing content, and that your game will be consistent with your marketing materials.”
The second category is live-generated AI content, which includes any content created by AI while the game is running and being played. Like the first category of pre-generated AI, developers will need to tell Valve what kind of “guardrails” it will put on their live-generated AI content “to ensure it’s not generating illegal content.”
Once submitted by the developers, Valve will use the disclosures as part of their review of the game before it releases on Steam. Valve is also creating a system which allows players on Steam to report any illegal content inside games that live-generated AI creates. Players will be able to do so through the in-game Steam overlay.
Valve said these new guidelines around AI “will enable us to release the vast majority of games that use it.” It also expects to continue learning more about AI use in games and review its changes if needed, “we’ll continue to learn from the games being submitted to Steam, and the legal progress around AI, and will revisit this decision when necessary,” Valve said in the community forum post.
Image credit: Valve
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