Anthropic takes steps to block Claude from reverse-engineering video games

Anthropic has begun restricting Claude from performing video game modding, decompiling and reverse-engineering tasks, according to reporting from Tom's Hardware, with no official announcement from Anthropic on the reason. Users also report that non-malicious, generic reverse-engineering requests are being blocked. Tom's Hardware reporter Bruno Ferreira noted the move "highlights the irony of frontier AI companies that copied the world's information and art for their training sets and are now concerned with copyright infringement.

Anthropic takes steps to block Claude from reverse-engineering video games According to reporting from Tom's Hardware https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/anthropics-ai-model-is-now-blocking-attempts-at-video-game-recreation-and-cloning-users-also-claim-non-malicious-generic-reverse-engineering-tasks-are-blocked , Anthropic's Claude AI has quietly started restricting the kinds of work it will do, including modding, decompiling, or reverse-engineering video game code. And though there has as yet been no official announcement about why , the reason is still pretty obvious. The video game community has been in the news a lot lately, first because of the GTA6 leaks https://mashable.com/entertainment/grand-theft-auto-6-cyberleek-leaks-everything-so-far that went mega-viral and spurred Take-Two Interactive into getting subpoenas against both Microsoft and Discord in the hopes of finding the responsible parties, and next because the hacking and modding community discovered how much easier AI makes their job. First, game decompilers went into overdrive, playing around with the source code of multiple different video games to, for example, put Nintendo's Mario inside the dark gothic world of Elden Ring https://x.com/Splainte/status/2112596528573599868?a=Jk0ZLuR5fyhJ7AU7Gds&s=20 , or import Spider-Man into the Batman: Arkham City game https://x.com/search?q=mario%20elden%20ring&src=typed query , seamlessly blending the mechanics of one character into the world of another. Next came the ports: World of Warcraft , Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City made playable in a browser, without the original developers or copyright owners having any say in the matter. Terms of Use https://www.ziffdavis.com/terms-of-use and Privacy Policy https://www.ziffdavis.com/ztg-privacy-policy . You May Also Like These initial modifications and ports were already giving gaming companies nightmares, teasing a future without system gatekeeping, but things really got out of hand with the PlayStation 5 jailbreak https://mashable.com/tech/ps5-jailbreaks-flooding-in-thanks-to-ai , which resulted in everything from backward compatibility with older-gen PlayStation games to cross-platform play, with users figuring out how to run Xbox-exclusive titles like Halo 2 https://www.techpowerup.com/353381/halo-2-reportedly-runs-at-30-fps-on-a-jailbroken-ps5-thanks-to-new-xbox-emulator and acclaimed Nintendo titles like Zelda: Breath of the Wild https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YqFiq38XIgs on a jailbroken PS5. Given the potential number of lawsuits these jailbreaks could cause, and the astronomically high nature of the monetary damages, it's no surprise that AI companies are scrambling to shut down or severely restrict these pathways, but it's also deeply ironic. As Tom's Hardware reporter Bruno Ferreira notes https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/anthropics-ai-model-is-now-blocking-attempts-at-video-game-recreation-and-cloning-users-also-claim-non-malicious-generic-reverse-engineering-tasks-are-blocked , this sudden concern for copyright "highlights the irony of frontier AI companies that copied the world's information and art for their training sets and are now concerned with copyright infringement." There's also the ugly truth that, if one company makes a gesture toward respecting copyright law or basic ethics, the bad actors can find another LLM that won't or hasn't yet taken the same precautions, creating a kind of AI arms race driven by perverse incentives: the least ethical AI might be poised to become the most popular.