With Mario, you don’t do what you want. With the help of AI, a copyright tool searches for images of the little plumber that were generated by AI, and ensures that they are taken offline.
Mario, a beer in his hand or a cigarette on his lips: Nintendo does not appreciate this kind of thing and therefore called on a company, Tracer, to remove these images of with the help of X’s Grok AI itself. This is what the editor-in-chief of The Verge reveals, who received a warning from the platform indicating that content had been deleted from his account following a complaint from Tracer. This firm offers AI-based services to other companies to detect copyright violations.
The request to remove the image in question also included links to posts – which have since disappeared – that infringe the copyright of Nintendo’s Mario. Grok is known for doing very little to prevent the creation of abusive or copyright-infringing content. One of the accounts involved said it was an AI-generated image of Luigi and Waluigi dressed as Israeli soldiers.
Fan art also in the crosshairs
The wide net used by Tracer also helps to ferret out fan art. OtakuRockU announced that it had been warned that its account could be deleted because of a Mario drawing. The same thing happened to the similar X account PoyoSilly.
It is still unclear to what extent Nintendo itself is involved in this matter, although the Japanese firm is known to be eager to take legal action when it comes to its copyrights.
