On the latest episode of MinnMax, a podcast featuring former Game Informer staff and others discussing the week’s biggest industry news, video game lawyer Haley MacLean shared her legal perspective on the recent changes planned for Unreal Engine 6. If you missed it, Epic recently expanded on UE6 and the updates it will bring, which sparked mixed reactions from developers, particularly around the deprecation of Blueprints and the introduction of native generative AI integration through an MCP plug-in.
Essentially, MacLean talked about the widely known issue surrounding AI: legal systems around the world require human authorship, which means content that is created by AI can’t be copyrighted. She discussed possible precedents around the reuse of AI-generated assets across different games, and the issues developers could face with bad-faith publishers when using AI assets that, by their nature, can’t be properly licensed.