Microsoft and Epic Games Suddenly Agree That AI Is Theft

The piece examines the surge in AI-assisted game recreations and the copyright takedowns that followed. New coding tools can rapidly produce browser ports and recompilations, including unauthorized versions of Fortnite, Minecraft, Call of Duty, and Halo. But indie developers have also been targeted: open-source recreations of Slay the Spire 2, Celeste, and RimWorld appeared without their creators’ consent, despite those games containing no generative AI content. The author accuses Microsoft and Epic Games of hypocrisy for enforcing their own intellectual property rights while embracing AI. Epic uses AI tools and plans an AI-driven Disney/Marvel game, while its terms restrict users from training AI on its content. Microsoft has used AI-generated Call of Duty artwork and invested heavily in AI infrastructure, even as internal communications acknowledged that AI systems may rely on unlicensed work, displace creators, and undermine the web’s supply of content.

The argument is not that unauthorized game recreations should be legal: the author says the resulting harm falls especially hard on independent studios, which lack the resources to fight takedowns. The piece instead sympathizes with developers whose work is copied without consent and who did not choose to use AI. In an update, Epic chief Tim Sweeney said the criticism conflated separate issues: Epic does not permit uncompensated use of Fortnite, though it restricts AI training on Unreal Engine and MetaHuman outputs and is working to remove that restriction. He also distinguished piracy used to acquire training data from AI training itself, which courts have treated as potentially fair use, and noted that whether generated output infringes can depend on its similarity to copyrighted work.