This could have been a great example of how machine learning, not AI, could make games more accessible. Key word parsing has been around a long time. I don’t get how they messed this up so bad. But leave it to Square...

This one’s not on Kotaku. It’s on SE for calling it an AI Tech Preview in the Steam game title.

This is NLP, which I wouldn’t call an AI of any kind.

Just what I was thinking. Would feel like a reach to lump it in with the broader AI art fad, were it not Square Enix, and that probably the reason the project happened at all.

Man, this sounds like a good use for a LLM. It’s a shame it’s so poorly implemented here.

Neil Gaiman has been very vocal on social media about asking people to STOP sending him their fanfiction and ideas. Because then he has to be responsible for remembering it and not executing on any idea that occurs to him that is too close to it.

The “small guy” is a hack trying to make easy money and doesn’t have a leg to stand on. I’m all for protecting individual interests over a monolith like Amazon, but not all small guys are good people/in the right.

And why he never got a response.

So I gave the same prompt to a different generator repeatedly. It started with a woman in a blazer and collared shirt holding a device that did not really resemble any game controller. By the final attempt it had her with more casual hair style wearing a tee and a zip up hoodie and the controller looked much more…

Fanfic itself is not. But original characters or elements you create for the fanfic can be copyrighted, but only the parts which are separate from the original work.

If you write and publish fanfic of something in the public domain, such as Jane Austen’s books, you do own the copyright on your own work and any additional characters you invent. I know this from personal experience. Someone took my fanfic off the internet and published it on Kindle under a fake name, and my…

Yeah, my bad. For some reason I thought they did not have the rights to the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit (probably because I assumed that if they did that’s what they would’ve adapted). It’s still a weird slice of the pie but it really only becomes complicated due to the specific era in which their show takes place.

My understanding is they have TV rights (not film or video game) to The Lord of the Rings (but not The Hobbit/The Silmarillion/etc). I was under the impression that anything mentioned in the Appendices is fair game, since that’s technically part of The Lord of the Rings specifically.

Due to the complicated nature of what rights Amazon has in regards to Rings of Power, I’m actually fairly sure they don’t have the rights to Sam’s daughter. I don’t say this to refute your comment; I just say this to call out how bizarrely narrow Amazon’s rights are for this show.

Worth noting, the Elanor in his book isn’t just a different Elanor from the one in Amazon’s show; it’s also a character expressly created by Tolkien, mentioned by name in Appendix B. She can’t possibly have been infringed by Amazon and the Tolkien Estate when they owned her to begin with. FFS she even appears at the…

Eh, it depends on a variety of factors.

He copyrighted the name in 2017 and sent the Tolkien estate a copy for review. So they had time to hand it off to the showrunners to use as inspiration before they aired a single episode in 2020.

That is correct. 

Because law. Legally speaking, any wholly new elements of creative work would be under copyright, but when it comes to fan fiction, it would be incredibly messy.

No, but his book is self-published...so, this could most likely bite him in the ass, if the Tolkien estate chose to counter-sue him for doing so.