Is a human writing this column? How can you be sure? As it becomes harder to distinguish people from AI, a wide array of different “solutions” are beginning to emerge, some more dystopian than others. Authors are posting videos of themselves writing their books in real time to prove they’re not using large language models. Sam Altman has come up with a device called The Orb which “verifies you are a unique human” by scanning your eyeballs. And under the EU’s AI Act, certain types of AI-generated content will have to be labelled as such from next year.

But the most interesting debate on the topic is taking place in the video games industry, where a conversation is unfolding that many more of us will probably need to have soon.

In January 2024, Steam — the most prominent digital storefront for PC games — began to require developers to disclose whether (and how) they used AI tools in the creation of their game. According to Ichiro Lambe, a games industry veteran who has been tracking the trends in AI disclosures, around 1,000 games had disclosed the use of generative AI by April 2024. That number has now mushroomed to more than 11,000, or roughly 9 per cent of the entire Steam library, he told me. According to the disclosures, developers are using AI for a wide array of tasks, from coding assistance and marketing materials to generating visuals, textures, background music and characters’ voices using “text-to-speech” tools.