As the controversy around AI-created video game copies continues, Anthropic seemingly restricts Claude's cloning abilities

An update to Anthropic's Claude AI software has seemingly restricted the creation of exact clones or copies of existing games. Rather, Claude is now programmed to generate only original games. A screenshot shared by X user Chasm on October 27th indicated the new rule, which stated that users should build original games, games in a particular genre, and games from their own designs and assets.

However, they should not build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if renamed or labeled as original. While Anthropic has not yet released an official statement on the new rule, technical staff member Addy Osmani confirmed its validity on Chasm's post. He explained that it was introduced due to the usage policy prohibiting Claude from infringing intellectual property rights.

However, he added that creating original games and those crafted with a user's own assets should still be feasible. The new rule has prompted users on GitHub to report new barriers they encounter. Such barriers include being blocked from creating digital modules for board games and recreating commercially produced board games for personal use.

Anthropic has been contacted for comment on the rule change and its stance on AI-generated game copies. The modifications to Claude have come at a time when AI-generated game copies have been receiving significant criticism, with game communities opposing them and developers removing public-facing demos to prevent their work from being stolen.

AI-assisted copies of popular games, such as a browser-based version of Mario Kart 8, have also emerged but were removed shortly due to a legal notice from Nintendo. It's worth noting that even if Claude is unable to generate game copies, other AI tools like Deepseek do not have similar restrictions. Until such measures become widespread, the issue will persist.

Given Claude's popularity as one of the leading commercial AI tools, this development is expected to alleviate the problem to some extent.