[UPDATE] Nintendo Reportedly Lobbying Against Generative AI In Japan

UPDATE: Nintendo has issued an official statement denying the following claims, which you can read more about here. The original article has been preserved below for posterity.

For the past few years, generative AI has become a hot topic of discussion in the gaming sphere, with gamers and game publishers having differing opinions on its place in the hobby.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nintendo is firmly in the camp against the use of generative AI in games. While they have made it clear in the past that they do not use generative AI in their own games, it seems they are now going one step further to push for stricter regulation in their home country of Japan.

This information comes from an X/Twitter post by Satoshi Asano, a member of the House of Representatives in Japan who had been publicly gathering opinions on generative AI through social media. Asano discusses several high profile disputes and lawsuits relating to the technology, including a statement about Nintendo’s stance as follows (translated via machine translation):

“Nintendo avoids using generative AI to protect its IP and is also engaging in lobbying activities with the government.”

The wording seems to imply that Nintendo is actively lobbying the Japanese government to regulate generative AI. In addition, Asano immediately follows this by stating that his party will take measures to promote “ethical use of generative AI while considering strengthening regulations”.

“In the future, as a party, we will promote the ethical use of generative AI while considering strengthening regulations”

This report comes after OpenAI’s image generator Sora 2 went viral online for generating pictures featuring Nintendo’s IPs, many of which would be considered very unflattering for the game developer. Whether or not Nintendo will be successful in its attempts to quell this new form of abuse of its IPs remains to be seen.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.