Another week another instance of the creative industry versus the AI industry popping up. This time around its actually the government stepping into the ring to side with the creatives. In a bipartisan move, Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican John Curtis have introduced a bill to Congress dubbed the CLEAR Act or fully known as the Copyright Labeling and Ethical AI Reporting Act. This bill, if passed, will make AI companies clearly outline what copyrighted works are being used for their generative AI models. With the Games industry being the industry that is at the forefront of the AI usage situation, the results of the bill being passed could send waves throughout the industry.

AI usage in video games has been a constant debate in the Games industry with fans and creatives being on one side and corporations and shareholders being on the other. If this bill passes through both the House and the Senate, it will be a big moment in the fight many on the development and creative side of gaming.  One of the biggest supporters of the bill is SAG-AFTRA which just had a massive voice actor strike against the gaming industry due to AI technology being implemented in games. This strike lasted nearly a year and had over 16,000 voice actors striking against most big game companies before ending last summer.

Elsewhere, AI use is being constantly pushed or developed by companies. Sony even had internal meetings in regards to an “AI Aloy” from the Horizon franchise which caused Aloy’s voice actor Ashly Burch to lament how AI is impacting video games. Reports even surfaced last year that Microsoft was allegedly pushing developers to use AI tools in their work. Even just a a couple weeks ago, Google’s introduction of their Genie 3 AI toolset caused some of the biggest gaming companies’ share prices to fall just on the basis of it being able to create 3D worlds. Valve has even recently updated their own generative AI rules for games on Steam. Sega even recently stated they plan to implement AI in the development of their games as well.

The AI debate has even impacted some of the biggest games of last year. Acclaimed games such as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had some of the awards it won last year rescinded for using generative AI for concept art. Battlefield 6 which saw massive success for revitalizing the franchise saw fan backlash following allegedly using AI art.

All this is just shows the constant struggle and fight the video game industry is facing in modern development. The CLEAR Act could be the first step for the government to actually step in on this fight and regulate AI use on some kind of level. Only time will tell on if this bill makes it way through Congress and becomes law.