Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney believes Steam and other game stores should ditch the “Made with AI” tags, arguing that they will soon lose relevance as generative AI becomes ubiquitous in production.
“The AI tag is suitable for art exhibitions to reveal authorship and for digital content licensing markets where buyers need to understand the rights situation.” Sweeney wrote on X in response to a call from users on Steam and other digital marketplaces to drop tags marking content created using generative AI. “This doesn’t make sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in almost all future production.”
“Why limit yourself to the use of artificial intelligence? We could compulsorily disclose what brand of shampoo the creator uses,” he wrote next post. “Customers deserve to know, lol.”
After initially being cautious about AI-generated code and assets, Steam now allows most games developed using generative AI, provided such employ is disclosed. Sweeney, who also runs the rival Epic Games Store, believes this type of disclosure is no longer necessary.
Earlier this month, Junghun Lee, CEO of publisher Nexon, he said “it was important to assume that every game company now uses AI” after criticism over the employ of AI-generated voice lines in a game published by Nexon Archers. Sweeney charged X then arguing that AI “increases human productivity in some areas by integer multiples,” but that this should lead to “building better games, not employing fewer people.”
Sweeney may be right that the employ of AI is becoming more common, and not just in gaming, as Microsoft claims that 91 percent of its engineering teams employ GitHub Copilot, and AI is increasingly embedded in all kinds of development and original tools. That doesn’t mean every developer would support ditching AI labels, however, as an increasing number of independent game developers employ “AI-free” as a sales slogan.