UK Games Expo bans games and art made mostly using AI

The UK Games Expo (UKGE), the UK’s largest tabletop gaming convention, has just published a new AI policy banning games and other products mostly created using the technology from the exhibition floor. According to the UK Games Expo AI Policy, the organizers reserve the right to require exhibitors displaying or selling games that were mostly built using AI to remove them. Should the exhibitor refuse to comply, their booth could be closed down, and they could be banned from participating in UKGE moving forward.

UKGE said that it supports original works from human designers, publishers, artists, illustrators, and writers. “We therefore require that our Exhibitors ensure that all products exhibited, displayed, or sold have been created by humans using their own skills. Items and products that have been created or generated completely or in significant part by the use of AI tools and programs are prohibited,” it said in its new policy document. “This includes but is not limited to art and text used in all forms of tabletop games and associated products and accessories, craft items, piece of arts, clothing, and books both fiction and non-fiction.” The only exception that the event organizer listed is the “use of computerized tools used for spell checking and minor editing and aiding in production or accessibility.”

Many big AI tech companies are currently facing copyright-related legal battles. For example, legal filings in the New York Times’ lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI reveal that a director from the latter called AI scraping “the largest theft of labor in human history,” while Anthropic agreed to settle a $1.5 billion class action lawsuit brought by authors over allegations that it used pirated books to train Claude. Meta is also accused of torrenting nearly 82TB of pirated books for training its AI models, while Nvidia allegedly tried to cut a deal with Anna’s Archive to get high-speed access to pirated books. Because of these incidents, many artists and writers feel that their work is being threatened by AI. Aside from this, they also argue that they are being replaced by these algorithms, leading to a tighter job market for many creatives.

UKGE itself previously faced controversy after it promoted a tabletop game that was built mostly using AI. The organizer faced backlash online, which was further fueled after it was discovered that negative comments were being hidden or deleted. This announcement represents a significant shift in UKGE’s handling of the use of AI in tabletop games, placing it among a growing number of organizations imposing restrictions on AI-generated content.

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