Epic Games' recent acquisition of ArtStation (opens in new tab) is, among other things, one of the largest websites used by artists to share their portfolios. This means that ArtStation is also a target for AI companies looking for a lot of classified visual art as free training material for their machine learning algorithms. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, said that while he is not taking a hard-line stance against generative AI systems in general, he does not like the idea of companies capturing people's artwork without their permission.

"They scrap the web to find people's artwork and use it," he said.

"And companies shouldn't be doing that. It might be permissible for research purposes, but as long as they are selling a commercial product that is used to generate commercial artwork, they shouldn't be doing that."

Last year, Epic created a "noAI" tag that artists could apply to their ArtStation work, explicitly prohibiting its use for AI training. Many users felt that the tag should have been applied to all artwork by default rather than leaving it up to the user to add it, but for now it exists as a way to make a positive statement.

"The choice not to use the tag is left to copyright law to govern whether the artwork was used fairly," ArtStation's AI policy page (opens in new tab), last updated in February, states. "The use of AI and its place in copyright law is new and unsettled, and many questions remain about the enforceability of copyright law against the use of works in AI. adding a "NoAI" tag makes it clear that use of works in AI is not permitted, regardless of their copyright law status can be done.

The use of generative AI in the production of artwork submitted to ArtStation is not prohibited by the site's rules, but it does introduce a filter for users who do not want to see AI-generated images, telling artists: "The work that appears in your portfolio , should be your own creation and we encourage you to be transparent in the process.

Image generators like Midjourney and chatbots like ChatGPT are currently the most public and controversial applications of machine learning models, but as Sweeney says, "it's a much bigger field" and one that Epic is already involved in It's also an area in which we are involved. [For example, our content scanning of real-world objects at Quixel and 3Lateral is based on using AI and machine learning to generate very high-quality 3D images from 2D photos. 'Sweeney told me, "We have a lot of work to do. Most of it is an improvement on the way we do things now."

As for the use of more "disruptive" AI, such as image generators, Sweeney says he intends to strike a balance between protecting creative work and allowing artists to work with new technology at their own will.

"At Epic, we see ourselves on both sides," Sweeney says. 'We are creators ourselves. We have a lot of artists in our family. We are also a tools company. We support a lot of game developers. Some of them will use AI, some of them will hate AI. We want to be a reliable and neutral intermediary that doesn't get in the way of the development of the industry.

As AI technology and copyright law evolve, that middle ground stance may feel somewhat strained: for example, if scraping art for AI training is determined to be legal, the "noAI" ArtStation tag and whether it defaults to whether it is applied by default will become more significant.

Beyond image generators, it is becoming clear that some form of AI is going to touch everything we do with computers, whether we want it to or not. One company I sometimes cite as an interesting but not very sensible example of machine learning technology is using it to automatically rig 3D models for animation. Not long ago, Rocket League cheaters were using god-like bots trained with machine learning algorithms. Now, Discord is sticking ChatGPTs on our servers.

I interjected this question about AI into a larger conversation with Sweeney about the Epic Games Store and its new self-publishing tools. I also asked about Epic's exclusivity strategy going forward: the short version is that while exclusivity on the Epic Games Store will not go away, Epic will focus less on niche games and more on larger publishing deals.

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