A new report created by Totally Human Media has revealed just how much generative AI is being used on Steam, or at least how many games disclose using AI. This report found that at least one thousand games have disclosed that the product made use of generative AI at some point in its production in one form or another.
The report in question scraped Steam store pages to find out how many of them had the segment on the store page that disclosed AI had been used in the creation of the game or product. According to author Ichiro Lambe, this was "an order of magnitude more" than they expected. While games that used Generative AI were initially banned by Valve, Steam loosened its restrictions on generative AI content by allowing it on the condition that there is a special disclosure on the store page.
The most prominent game to make use of generative AI is of course The Finals, which invited controversy when it was revealed last year that character voices were created with AI. In their disclosure on AI usage, Embark says, "During the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team. Examples include voiceover audio where we utilize text-to-speech tools to e.g. generate the audio of our in-game commentators Scotty & June." The use of AI in The Finals was further elaborated on in an interview with Game Developer, where brand director Sven Grundberg said that the tools, "work better and faster, and do more with less".
Of course, The Finals is only one game, but other games like Tribes 3: Rivals also have the AI disclosure. A large number of small games like RetroMaze, The Great Rebellion, and Ghost Talker also disclose the use of AI.
AI usage in games comes in a large variety from things like various artwork (character, background, concept, UI, and store), to voice acting, to narrative, and even tools in some cases. We have even seen AAA companies experimenting in the area, such as Square Enix with Square Enix AI Tech Preview: The Portopia Serial Murder Case which applied it in several ways, including attempting to parse written commands with the AI.
What Problems Are Facing Generative AI
Generative AI has been under a lot of fire because of the ways companies have made use of training data, as well as some of the ways it has been gathered. There are many lawsuits against various AI companies including ones from high-profile authors, the New York Times, Getty Images, a variety of Magic: The Gathering artists, and many others. One particularly damning piece of evidence that turned up was that the developers of Midjourney were caught essentially laundering artists' works and changing them into sets of styles to hide who they are training from.
