CD Projekt says it's not using generative AI on The Witcher 4 because it's 'quite tricky when it comes to legal IP ownership'

CD Projekt said in January 2024 that AI "can help improve certain processes in game production, but not replace people," a mushy sort of statement that's difficult to pin down to any real stance. During today's FY 2024 financial presentation, however, joint CEO Michał Nowakowski got a little more specific on the topic, saying the studio is not using generative AI on The Witcher 4 or other in-development games. Not because the results are usually dodgy, but because of potential legal entanglements.

"I think we mentioned before that last year, we set up a team that’s investigating the potential use of AI solutions in our future products, including development of our own customized AI models," Nowakowski said in response to a question about the use of generative AI in CD Projekt's future games. "And we have several research projects underway. However, they are really not necessarily focusing on generative AI.

"Gen AI, to be honest, is quite tricky when it comes to legal IP ownership and so on, and many other aspects. So when it comes to implementation of any gen AI in the actual games, we really have nothing happening when it comes to Witcher 4 or any projects in the near future."

CD Projekt is hardly the first company to be put off by legal concerns surrounding generative AI: In 2022, for instance, Getty banned the upload and sale of AI-generated images over concerns that the algorithms used to create them may have been trained on materials they're not legally entitled to. Valve expressed similar concerns when it rejected a game featuring AI-generated art from Steam in 2023.

"The introduction of AI can sometimes make it harder to show a developer has sufficient rights in using AI to create assets, including images, text, and music," Valve said at the time. "In particular, there is some legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models."

The use of copyrighted material in training AI, generative and otherwise, has become a very big issue, beyond the scope of this story—thankfully PC Gamer's Jacob Ridley has a really good rundown of what it's all about, complete with some outstanding, absolutely not gen-AI art. But the short version is that massive, multi-billion-dollar AI companies claim they can't survive without taking advantage of material they don't have the rights to, some artists and journalists who actually create things are pushing back, and while it's usually a good bet that big corporations will ultimately get their way, questions abound for now and the potential for headaches is real.

And yes, AI-generated art kinda sucks. That's a very relevant point too.

The use of gen AI in The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2078, or whatever lies in CD Projekt's future isn't completely off the table: If the question of rights and ownership is adequately settled, "we may look at it," Nowakowski said. "But there's nothing happening with gen AI specifically."

Speaking of things that aren't happening soon, CD Projekt also said today that The Witcher 4 won't be out until sometime in 2027 at the earliest.