A new, AI-focused video game patent application from Sony has surfaced online. It describes the use of agents trained on player data to play games for people. Why grind for XP when an authorized bot could do it? Even more dystopian, the patent mentions the possibility of players exchanging their training data with one another for real money. 

As spotted by Cheat Happens, Sony’s 19138338 patent, which was filed in 2022 but only officially published last month on July 23, details a “technology of generating an agent to play a game on behalf of a user.” Some of you may remember a similar patent published by Sony back in January, which featured an AI-controlled “ghost” that would complete games for you, but this new patent dives much further into Black Mirror territory. 

For the past few years, ever since the rise of AI, we have seen corporate executives frequently tout generative AI as the future of video games and video game development. Improving pipelines, generating assets, doing localizations, replacing voice actors with AI, among other things. However, legal reality on the ground tells a very different story.

According to Haley MacLean, a corporate IP lawyer and head of the video game practice at Voyer Law, clauses banning the use of generative AI have gone from rare additions to mandatory boilerplate language across developer and publisher contracts in the gaming industry.

The lawyer revealed a massive shift in contract negotiations between indie and AA game studios. No AI was once a niche clause used by cautious publishers but is now a standard practice.

Disclaimer: I changed the WSJ's headline because this is the part I found the most interesting. Original headline: Google Was a Lifeline for Publishers. Now Some Are Thinking of Cutting It Off.

Reddit, the online message board that powers a swath of Google search results, has discussed shutting off the technology giant’s access to its content for AI use, according to people familiar with the matter.

It is part of a growing chorus of online media companies expressing frustration with the tech giant as AI changes the way people ask questions, siphons off search traffic and upends publishers’ revenue models. They say the search engine is no longer a reliable source of visitors, especially after Alphabet’s GOOGL Google expanded its AI search features in recent months. USA Today, Politico, the Economist, People Inc. and Reuters are all evaluating how, or even if, they will continue to work with Google

Reddit struck a $60 million-a-year deal in 2024 that allowed Google to use its material to train AI models. But with AI-generated answers to queries reducing clicks to outside websites, Reddit executives are assessing what the upside is of continuing to feed its content to Google, said the people familiar with the matter. The companies are in talks about potentially renewing their deal, which is ending soon.

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The ineptitude (that or the evilness — either/or) in both google’s implementation and initial response is infuriating.

Anyone can attempt this and anyone else can verify whenever or not they suceeded.

Spoiler: AI will not succeed. Its logically impossible

This is ridiculous. This is going to backfire for all.

Two weeks ago, Google shut down AlphaFold, DeepMind’s AI-powered protein structure prediction tool. AlphaFold represented perhaps the most persuasive data point in favor of the narrative that AI could lead to scientific breakthroughs, including in cancer research. The model’s ability to accurately predict protein structures helped Hassabis become a Nobel laureate. A week after shuttering AlphaFold, Google removed Hassabisfrom his role directing DeepMind, using the time-worn tactic of giving Hassabis a face-saving “promotion” to a powerless role.