Andre Chenini Moreira is an attorney specializing in gaming, esports, intellectual property and artificial intelligence. He will be giving a presentation later this month at the Nordic Game 23 in Malmö, Sweden, on “Using AI-Generated Assets and Their Legal Implications.”
This is a timely speech at a time when AI is dominating the headlines. Members of the Writers Guild of America are now on strike, making the use of AI one of their core concerns.
Entertainment companies, including game publishers and developers, have already begun the process of replacing human workers with cheaper AI. This has ethical and legal implications that are far from resolved. Governments around the world have yet to incorporate the use of AI into their legal frameworks. Even the definition of “AI” is debatable. No wonder so many people are confused.
I spoke with Moreira about his work and the state of AI in game development, and learned a lot about complex issues.
Game Daily: Please tell us about yourself and your work.
Moreira: I am a lawyer from Brazil and a founding partner of FMA.legal. We are a small law firm specializing in the technology and creative markets. We work with the gaming industry, esports and software development. I have been working in the games industry for about 10 years.
When people started talking about artificial intelligence and what legal implications this technology would have for the gaming industry, I decided to take a closer look. I studied. I have attended several associations that discuss the implementation of artificial intelligence, such as the International Artificial Intelligence and Law Association.
I participated in a working group discussing the ethical implementation of autonomous entities in various uses across society.
Game Daily: What do you hope the Nordic Game 23 audience will take away from your presentation?
Moreira: Once we start talking about artificial intelligence, it is very difficult to avoid an abstract approach, a conversation that incorporates philosophical questions about the rights of consciousness and personality. But I’m taking a more realistic approach.
I would like to discuss AI-related issues such as intellectual property and liability facing the gaming and legal industries. I would like to give the audience an overview of these issues and how legal practitioners seek to address them.
Legislators here in Brazil, in the US, in the EU and elsewhere are catching up, but so far they are looking for basic guidance. Most laws around the world stipulate that creating a copyright requires human activity during the creative process. Our law currently does not adequately cover AI issues. My question is, can machine-developed creations retain intellectual property rights, and if so, who can claim them?
It also describes responsibilities related to the use of artificial intelligence tools. Most of the tools we see today take input from multiple places, including copyrighted works. Is it legally possible? who is responsible?
Also, decisions made by AI can raise data protection issues. What rights do consumers have if they are affected by an autonomous entity (perhaps the entity that made the mistake)? Will it have an impact? For example, I’m thinking about how some companies are using AI to uncover cheating in games. The AI automatically bans players it finds cheating, but the AI isn’t always right. At this time, very few companies have granted the right to appeal.
Game Daily: How prevalent is the use of AI in game creation today?
Moreira: We are living a big moment in generative AI. Artificial intelligence tools are being used to create digital assets such as illustrations, characters, music, sound effects, voices and animations.
There are many companies already providing AI tools to the gaming industry. And to help developers develop faster, leading companies are implementing AI in their software development kits.
For example, Yves Jaquier, executive director of Ubisoft La Forge, said Ubisoft has already begun developing an internal code of conduct for AI use.
Game Daily: Let’s return to the issue of AI and intellectual property ownership.
Moreira: From my legal point of view, currently there are no intellectual property rights in works derived from artificial intelligence tools.
Let’s say you used an AI tool to create an illustration of a cat wearing a red hat. For me, this is not enough to grant intellectual property rights to the final result. Input was minimal, such as using a search engine, as artificial intelligence created the images from the dataset.
There are other hypotheses. The first is that intellectual property rights come from artificial intelligence creations belonging to the company that created the artificial intelligence. However, in general, these company’s terms of use transfer all rights and responsibilities to you. Another option is for the person using the AI to own the copyright.
Ultimately, you will likely find yourself in a legal situation that requires proof that there was significant human intervention during the creative process, such as the user having a significant influence on the final result. Currently, intellectual property rights are obtained through human intervention. But answering that requires analyzing the inputs and processes of each piece.
Game Daily: Going back to the cat with the red hat example, if an AI is scraping copyrighted material to provide a result, the person claiming copyright to the original, i.e. the AI, carelessly uses It seems like a picture of a cat that has been ripped off. As a result, they may seek to sue for copyright infringement. can you talk about that?
Moreira: Legal and creative professionals are now trying to understand the issue. But creators have rights and they exercise those rights. They understand that giving artificial intelligence their work to create works for others is infringement.
AI companies, on the other hand, argue that the results are fair use. They just use previous work to provide the best results and make AI tools better. They argue that there should be no infringement because they are not directly exploiting individual works.
It leads to the question of whether a particular AI result is derivative or transformative. As a result, will a lot of the elements be used to create something new, or simply duplicate work that already exists?
Game Daily: Therefore, companies making extensive use of AI will always need humans to consider the consequences very carefully, if only from a legal standpoint, before discussing the creative aptitudes of humans and AI. . It appears to undermine the company’s apparent desire to cut costs and cut headcount.
Moreira: Well, companies always say they’re just using AI as a tool to help their employees and make their games better. They say humans aren’t replacing humans, they’re just changing how humans function. I don’t know if it’s true, but they say it is.
I think they are working on a balance between replacing labor and using AI. They understand that the process always requires human involvement, so they advise any company to always have someone check the legal status of their AI output.
Game Daily: Finally, I know that predicting the future is always risky, but it seems likely that there will be major lawsuits and lawsuits in the coming years that will go a long way toward clarifying these issues. increase. How is it expected to unfold?
Moreira: Yes, I believe the use of generative AI will eventually lead to litigation. We are all using AI tools more and more. For example, you can use ChatGPT to draft a basic business contract. AI tools are being used by people who don’t know how to code or create art. It’s spreading, and legal issues usually arise when things change this quickly. While governments around the world are trying to adapt, the legal framework is not yet ready. There will be a lot of lawsuits that address the issues I spoke of. We will see how our judiciary solves these problems.
