AI to Blame for UK's Embarrassing Online Safety Act Rollout? | 30/07/25
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Hello all and welcome to the latest issue of the
newsletter. As you read this I am somewhere driving across the highways of the UK on a short break as I visit friends and family in Scotland. Time to be reminded of just how busted my accent is…Anywho, this week is largely our sponsor newsletter, in which we go into detail on everything happening behind-the-scenes here at AI and Games. Including an update on case studies, interviews, newsletter topics, and more.
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Announcements
Just a quick announcement for this week…
AI and Games Conference Submissions Close This Friday!
That’s right, it’s time for us to bring the submissions to a close so we can get on with reviewing the pitches presented. We’ve had a pretty great response to this thus far, and I’ve had a little sneak peak at some what’s been submitted. It’s going to be tough to whittle this down to a 2-day event.
But there’s still time to submit. A quick reminder that if you work in and around AI and the games industry, then we’re keen to hear from you, whether you are:
An AI programmer or designer in indie or AA/AAA game development.
AI tool and middleware developers who operate within the game/AI space
A student or researcher exploring the intersection of AI and games
An expert in an area that is increasingly overlapping with AI in game development
E.g. lawyers, investors, advisors, marketing, press
Submissions close at the end of Friday August 1st. So get on down to the application form and check it out. You can submit at: https://submit.aiandgamesconference.com
AI (and Games) in the News
A quick round-up of some headlines that caught our interest! And no, we won’t be commenting on that incredibly dumb New York Times article. That’s oxygen best spent elsewhere.
PC Gamer Tried NVIDIA’s AI Assistant to Mixed Results
A story from a couple months back was that Nvidia is launching it’s own AI-assistant, known as ‘Project G-Assist’ for PC Gamers (much akin to Xbox’s Copilot efforts). The idea being that you can use it as a support device for helping you out with game performance and customisation. This kind of makes sense, given if you’re not well versed in PC graphics settings - or just don’t care - you can get this tool to figure it all out for you.
James Bentley over at PC Gamer had a mixed time trying it out, with a combination of poor and outdated recommendations, unstable performance, and it hogging memory and CPU as it tries to run a local version of Meta’s Llama language model.
The Embarrassing Rollout of the UK’s Online Safety Act
So I happened to mention this in a newsletter issue last year, that the UK’s Online Safety Act was coming into force in 2025 and it was going to prove contentious. Largely because it’s a government policy that’s rather poorly thought out and easily circumvented, but equally that so many businesses and platforms would have to rely on AI in order to do the job of identifying and toxic behaviours and undesirable content at scale.
For one thing, use of AI to catch toxic behaviours, attitudes, and content is something I am very much on board with. We need to do be doing better to cultivate safe online spaces for all users such that they can enjoy the merits of these platforms. However, the news story has been the introduction of an age verification process on various platforms and websites: where adults need to be able to prove their age in order to access certain features (typically adult content that could violate the OSA’s regulations).
While users can run credit card checks on some platforms, or the use of an official ID (driver’s license, passport), the alternative - if you haven’t just installed a VPN already -is to use their facial recognition portal. This technology is AI-driven, given it relies on both interpreting that the image presented is a human face, alongside identifying it’s a human face of a certain age. The idea being that if you present yourself to the platform it can immediately determine whether you’re old enough to engage with mature content and features.
Let’s not dwell on the fact that I think this is largely problematic, and is driven from a rather inherently flawed perspective - after all, how do you determine what an 18 year old looks like? Rather let’s revel in the fun in that it took less than a day for people to figure out that the process doesn’t try to recognise your face, just that it’s an adult face of a certain age. But also, it can’t tell the difference between a real human face, and a digital reproduction designed to look a certain age. Hence folks immediately started to use photos modes in games with realistic graphics like Death Stranding and WWE 2K25 as means to bypass the process.
I sincerely doubt the companies that built these systems weren’t aware of the inherent flaws in the design - which largely stem from the legislation itself - but to see it derailed so quickly, and shared online for laughs, has not helped matters.
It’s been an interesting couple of days where we’ve seen the UK Government fall over itself to try and address a system that anyone with a VPN can simply bypass. It’s been pointing out ever since the Conservative government drafted this legislation that many aspects of the age verification practice won’t work, and will only punish end-users, rather than those responsible for dangerous online content. The natural end-result that all of us with a modicum of understanding of technology anticipated. Just earlier in the week the UK technology secretary Peter Kyle - who I already pointed out has a habit of being more than happy to let AI companies lobby all over him - has came out and accused any criticism of the policy as on the side of “extreme pornographers”.
Sure thing Peter. Good grasp of the issues right there. I mean yes, he’s countering an argument by professional wet sock Nigel Farage, but perhaps have a more nuanced response than simply responding to any criticism by saying you’re “on the side of predators”.
As you can imagine, I am looking forward to seeing what wonders he creates with the UK’s AI legislation in the coming year.
My favourite part of this so far, is that Microsoft is now threatening that “Xbox users who wish to use voice or text communication with those outside of their friends list to verify their age”.
Speaking as someone who has had the joys of engaging with the players on the broader Xbox network over the years, if you’re telling me I can avoid this by simply not verifying my age, that’s not the threat you think it is.
The Sponsor Update
Alrighty, time to get into the behind-the-scenes of what’s going on at AI and Games. It’s been a pretty crazy few weeks for us and we’re knee deep in a tonne of work, but also we have a lot of very exciting stuff coming your way in our content creation pipeline as well. Plus of course the AI and Games Conference and other things we’re scheming away at.
One key thing for everyone to know, is that there will not be a YouTube episode/case study this month, given we decided to take a month off from production after release of the Alien: Isolation Retrospective. It was such a huge effort to get that video done, it kinda broke us if I’m honest! But don’t worry, as we discuss below, the next episodes are in development!
As always, a huge thank you to everyone who supports the work we do. You can read on past the paywall be becoming a paying subscriber.
Alrighty, let’s do it.
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