I’m hoping to get clarity from Epic on this situation:
Tl;DR: @epic Has the “NO AI” tag rendered the MCP plugin pretty much useless?
Almost all the assets I have seen are marked “No” for usage with AI. (“The creator has specified that this digital content is not to be utilized in datasets utilized by generative AI programs, in the development of Generative AI programs or as inputs to Generative AI programs”)
The new MCP plugin permits an AI agent to act on the contents of a project in ways that would (I assume) technically treat those assets as “inputs”, given that the AI will likely need to read the assets and potentially alter those assets depending on the task (consider tasks like “Make the rock bigger/blue/low poly” or “find all the skeleton models and give them a random sword” or whatever)
A cautious reading of the “No AI” clause has me thinking the MCP plugin is utterly off limits for most practical use. I’d like to install it for evaluation as a debugging aid/project cleaner etc. I could see a great use for it in pointing it at a problematic widget or class to analyze wtf is wrong, or even to check for code quality/style etc. Id REALLY like to use it for cleaning up projects - remove unused assets, fix up redirectors that the editor just can’t seem to manage, etc. As a stretch goal, (would need fab integration) it would be good for building a manifest of all the third party stuff in a project and checking for licenses (CCO or standard?) grouping assets by author etc.
but..
I can’t comfortably do that with any ‘live’ projects. Even if this plugin works well, it is going to be relegated to building out level prototypes with grey boxes or building POC widgets in ‘clean’ projects. If I’ve misunderstood, please enlighten me. I think the current “No AI” tag has removed most projects from being able to use this plugin.
If you’ve read this far, please give it a reply or a heart to hopefully get @epic to notice and confirm or clarify. I can’t be the only one wondering.
I had the same question and concern. Considering Epic’s integration of its MCP, it seems incongruous that it would then restrict the use of its FAB tools and tutorials from being used together in projects that utilize its MCP.
On re-reading the “No AI” text a couple more times I see that it’s really not saying “NO AI” so much as “Don’t use this as training material for Genitive AI”. There’s three phrases there that all (at least in my grasp of it) boil down to don’t feed this into an AI dataset/Use as an input for a genitive AI. I’m not marking this as ‘solved’, on the off chance Epic swings by and expands on things.
The problem. as you pointed out is the last clause, "inputs to Generative AI program" because it is very broad. My day job is attorney, and I completely agree with you. They may not have intended it to be a prohibition on using it in connection with its MCP, but the language is broad enough to encompass it (unless “input” is a specific term of art in this context that is more limited in scope). If someone from Epic were to chime in here to clarify that it can be used with MCPs, I would feel a lot more comfortable installing Epic’s FAB items.
I feel like we can bump this thread a bunch and still not get an @epic answer.
I’ve settled for using MCP with Claude with a fair number of constraints laid on it. I’ve written hard rules prohibiting Claude from engaging/providing inputs to generative AI specifically, a hard rule prohibiting edits/writes/copies of existing content (mine or 3rd party) without a permission, and a hard prohibition on any file being sent off of the machine without an explicit ask and grant of permission. Basically, the agentic AI is free to write where I tell it locally, and read-only everything else. Between forcing that sandbox and already avoiding any generation of visual assets in order to meet compliance with Steam’s AI disclosure rules, I feel like it should be enough to avoid inadvertently violating something that almost certainly wasn’t meant to apply anyway.