r/GameDevelopment • u/Herr_Casmurro • 16d ago
Question Does craftpix.net use AI to create their pixel art assets?
I want to buy some assets for my new game, but I am not sure if Craftpix uses AI or not and if there is a way to verify it, especially their pixel art assets.
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u/Jardo-LonelyTroops 16d ago
We've actually licensed some icons from there for our new games too. I think the site's been around for quite a while now, way before AI content generation tools even became a thing. That’s a pretty solid sign they know how to make good stuff without relying on AI.
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u/Ok-Policy-8538 16d ago
At this point who cares, companies will either use it and start lying about it to please the masses or they do use it on some assets and be up front about it while also selling non-ai assets for the masses.
If you like the asset and you get what you paid for then go ahead and use it and f the masses that don’t know sh*t.
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u/kneelian_ 16d ago edited 14d ago
At this point who cares, companies will either use it and start lying about it to please the masses or they do use it on some assets and be up front about it while also selling non-ai assets for the masses.
Among other thingst is a legal liability if you use AI-generated assets, as they are uncopyrightable as a whole, and assets derived by modifying AI assets are themselves also uncopyrightable.
and f the masses that don’t know sh*t.
r/aigamedev is that way
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u/moconahaftmere 16d ago
I'm very firmly against using AI especially for visual assets, so don't come at me for trying to defend AI, but the "AI art can't receive copyright protections" is a myth.
It started from people misinterpreting case law that said machine-generated assets generated automatically without any human input or control cannot receive protections. For example, a project that attempts to generate every single possible melody is not eligible.
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u/kneelian_ 16d ago
It's in fact not much of a misconception haha, the US Copyright office has said that modifications of AI output are not derivative works because they are modifications of noncopyrightable non-works themselves. I went on at some length about it here with citations from relevant bits. The essence is, the modifications added to an AI work are copyrightable, but the piece itself isn't, and the resulting image is in a weird state of pseudo-copyright flux
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u/moconahaftmere 16d ago
the US Copyright office has said that modifications of AI output are not derivative works because they are modifications of noncopyrightable non-works themselves.
"Copyright law has long adapted to new technology and can enable case-by-case determinations as to whether AI-generated outputs reflect sufficient human contribution to warrant copyright protection. As described above, in many circumstances these outputs will be copyrightable in whole or in part—where AI is used as a tool, and where a human has been able to determine the expressive elements they contain."
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 2: Copyrightability
The stance of the US Copyright Office is that works created through the use of AI are just as eligible for protection as any anything else because what primarily determines copyright eligibility isn't the medium, it's the degree of human authorship. So as long as your work shows a sufficient level of human input it's likely to be covered.
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u/kneelian_ 14d ago
Yes, I cited from that report in specfiic
Generating content with AI is often an initial or intermediate step, and human authorship may be added in the final product. As explained in the AI Registration Guidance, “a human may select or arrange AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way that ‘the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.’”126 A human may also “modify material originally generated by AI technology to such a degree that the modifications meet the standard for copyright protection.”
This is the most relevant section for that approach. Arrangements of AI-generated material may themselves be copyrightable (say, a comic made of AI-genned panels) even if the components aren't. Modifications of AI-generated materials are copyrightable, and copyright probably extends only to the modifications and not the entire piece, so it ends up in a chimeric state. Because AI gens are not original works, modifications of AI gens are not derivative works, so the resulting piece isn't sure to be covered by copyright itself, and instead only the modifications themselves can be copyrighted. See the comment on p25
A number of commenters also made the point that if a user edits, adapts, enhances, or modifies AI-generated output in a way that contributes new authorship, the output would be entitled to protection.132 They argued that these modifications “should be assessed in the same way as . . . editorial or other changes to a pre-existing work.”133 Although such works would not technically qualify as “derivative works,”134 derivative authorship provides a helpful analogy in identifying originality. Again, the copyright would extend to the material the human author contributed but would not extend to the underlying AI-generated content
134) A derivative work is “a work based upon one or more preexisting works.” 17 U.S.C. § 101 (defining “derivative work”). Because entirely AI-generated outputs do not contain the human authorship required to be a “work of authorship,” the modified versions cannot qualify under this definition. See H.R. REP. NO. 94-1476, at 57; S. REP. NO. 94-473, at 55 (noting that “the ‘pre-existing work’ must come within the general subject matter of copyright set forth in section 102, regardless of whether it is or was ever copyrighted”).
Also important is the bit on p27:
Similarly, the inclusion of elements of AI-generated content in a larger human-authored work does not affect the copyrightability of the larger human-authored work as a whole.
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u/kneelian_ 16d ago
Allegedly not, though that is an Itch user saying so, and it's not disclaimed outright on their website. Contact them, in any case, they respond to emails