Hi Moderategamer198,
I am very curious about this as well, since many game developers, creators and artists have EXTREME interest in building their own story, worlds, characters and franchises where any merch relating to their game, especially including their main characters - who should rightly belong to their IP - are protected under copyright.
In general, the issue is that with the AI movement and all of this “large companies owning super powerful tools that completely overtake industries / create new standards for the media in question” - basically places a lot of power in corporate pockets… In the end, the creators are at their mercy as far as what is allowed since the legal system is likely not going to catch up to the scale of these advancements anytime soon. So, the other user who said to consult a lawyer is correct as many instances would likely end up in a copyright trial - but only if the company owning the tool, such as Metahuman, decided to attempt to claim ownership over the created element. So it could also be a complete non-issue if the company has no interest in pursuing this kind of ownership, but obviously this might also be tempting for them if a bunch of AAA games come out with lead stars who are Metahumans… (I would also suggest that with many copyright trials, the bigger company with the most money will likely win since litigation is so time consuming and expensive, so for most small-scale creators, you probably don’t at all want it to come that.)
No one wants to pour their blood, sweat and tears into a game only to find out that their main character is owned by someone else and that they cannot effectively make any merchandise; they can likely only legally sell the game and market it and that could be about it… Metahuman on the other-hand, could potentially win rights to profit from any of their characters… regardless if these were individually generated characters that are really only what they are because of the creator who created an entire IP for them… It is also very possible that this could be deemed some kind of shared copyright, but obviously that is messy.
I would hope that the companies continue to celebrate the unique freshness that individual creators bring to the table and don’t get greedy and form monopolies instead. If they do favor individual creators, as Unreal genuinely seems to do, then hopefully we have less to worry about, but I fear the direction the world - particularly in the terms of copyright - is going.
I am certainly not an expert, just a fellow creator who would also love to know the answer to your question, but from reading the terms supplied, which I believe are intentionally left a bit vague (the company likely wants to keep their options open so early in the game) - I would suggest that if you upload a character that you modeled yourself (or had created for you), so that you legally own that copyright and then are able to effectively turn it into a Metahuman (I have not tried this, but apparently there are tools that allow one to do so and I think you can even upload the faces of real people, such as yourself) - then you own the likeness of the character and the copyright remains yours, but all of the things attributed solely by Metahuman thereafter (ex. an AI voice) would be owned by them, so effectively they may still own portions of what makes your character your character. This could be problematic if say, the company in question wanted to control a sequel and refused the creator access to his character’s voice. Might be an odd illustration, but I hope it’s helpful…
Alternatively, if you were to generate a character and then modify the mesh as you have described, I would suggest that it is more likely that Metahuman would be seen as having copyright ownership of the base mesh, which would constitute something like 80%+ of the character - without clothing. In which case, it is likely that Metahuman would then be seen as owning the “likeness” of the character. Again, this is just an assumption based on what I read.
Now that we have gotten past the potentially bleak side, I want to make it abundantly clear that I think that these tools are incredibly powerful and awesome, and they enable creators to do much, much more than they ever could individually. (I mean realistic, mouth-moving characters - amazing!) I still feel overall quite positive about learning how to use these tools; I too just hope for more transparent documentation in the future (who owns what really?) and for companies that work to enable creators instead of stealing from them - as we know many companies working in the realms of generative AI have done and will likely continue to do…
I am also leery, that companies always reserve the right to change their terms at any time, which I hope doesn’t apply at all to grandfathered materials. For instance, I believe that people should always retain ownership rights of their own likeness, especially under the context of them scanning it in. People should know, for instance, if generative AI is going to be trained on their copyrighted models or personal face shape, and ideally, they should be able to prevent anyone else from ever using these, including for “training purposes”.