I'd wait for more information before making any assumptions about what Valve is doing here. So often these stories here are lacking context due to only one side trying to paint the situation in a very one-sided light.
Agreed. The link here here is to a Reddit post from an relatively unknown person claiming to be quoting a private email from Valve. Kotaku has a bit more reporting, including a second report from a developer on Reddit. Also some comments on skepticism. https://kotaku.com/valve-ai-art-generator-steam-crypto-ban-m...
I'm pretty sure if this is Valve policy they'll have no trouble saying so publicly. I miss the old days of journalism where someone made an effort to get the story correct including responses from the named parties.
To be fair there are still examples of quality journalism, it's just that the internet doesn't care as much for that content, as it doesn't generate the outrage present in this thread. Unfortunately the incentives are aligned with ad revenue instead of accuracy.
> In its statement to PC Gamer, Valve said that "The introduction of AI can sometimes make it harder to show a developer has sufficient rights in using AI to create assets, including images, text, and music. In particular, there is some legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models. It is the developer's responsibility to make sure they have the appropriate rights to ship their game.
> We know it is a constantly evolving tech, and our goal is not to discourage the use of it on Steam; instead, we're working through how to integrate it into our already-existing review policies. Stated plainly, our review process is a reflection of current copyright law and policies, not an added layer of our opinion. As these laws and policies evolve over time, so will our process."
Valve is quite clear about their reasoning. Since AI models use all kind of sources for their training, they don't want those assets on their platform because they are afraid of copyright claims.
For all we know, the game in question had images clearly aping some licensed characters. We don't know how stringent the policies are without clarification or examples of art found infringing. How did Valve know that the art was AI-generated? Did the developer tell them or include it in their marketing materials? It's basically just reading tea leaves without that information.
It actually sounds like if you claim to have ownership of the training data you can still use AI generated assets. For most people this is a distinction without a difference however.
