In the lead up to GTA 6's long-awaited launch, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has called out companies like Anthropic and OpenAI for allowing users to plagiarize and clone pre-existing games using generative AI.
Generative AI's usage in game development has been highly controversial for many reasons, but in recent months, AI copycats have become an increasingly prevalent issue. Some Steam developers even cancelled demos or playtests out of fear their games would be cloned and put up for sale before their official release dates. Copycats of popular games like Mecca Chameleon can sometimes flood the storefront in no time, too.
"I think all companies should be protecting intellectual property, their own and everyone else's," Zelnick says when asked if he'd like to see more AI companies restrict users from reverse engineering games, in an interview with IGN.
"And if you're in the intellectual property business, which Anthropic is and OpenAI is, then it seems ironic on the one hand to stomp on someone else's IP and hope that yours is protected," he adds.
Anthropic recently added a new rule to Claude's backend code to block users from "recreating someone else's specific game," after lots of developers essentially had their work ripped off in mere minutes. The restriction might also stop Claude from being used in the tidal wave of vibe-coded recompilations we've seen in recent months - Mario Kart Wii, Banjo-Tooie and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening included.
"Using Claude to infringe IP is against our usage policy," Anthropic's member of technical staff Addy Osmani said at the time. "Original games, genre games, and games built from your own designs and assets are meant to keep working."
ChatGPT owner OpenAI seemingly has no such restrictions in place for now.
