Unity promises strong AI copyright 'guardrails' after employee conjures Mickey

6 hours ago 1

3 Min Read

Unity has told developers they should expect strong "guardrails" to be placed around its AI tools after their copyright-infringing capabilities were inadvertently tested by the engine maker on a now-deleted official stream. Unity informed Game Developer it had taken down the stream midway through writing this story.

On the stream, which aired on June 24, 2025, Unity senior advocate for emerging tech Manuel Sainsily accidentally confirmed the current version of Unity AI is capable of generating assets based off copyrighted content—in this case, Disney's widely recognized mascot Mickey Mouse.

Sainsily and senior community manager Jackson Stevens had been responding to a viewer who asked what would happen if a user told Unity AI to generate a sprite of Mickey Mouse. Stevens stated he'd successfully tested the existing guardrails in his own time, but Sainsily said that Unity has "no control" over the asset generation.

"Maybe the data might show some weird stuff," he said, before prompting the tool to generate an asset based on "Disney Mickey Mouse." Four images of the squeaky-voiced mascot then appeared in the asset library.

When asked about the incident, a Unity spokesperson stressed that one of the company's goals with its AI betas is to "make sure the right guardrails are in place to help prevent copyright issues, especially before those tools are generally available."

"Unity AI gives developers access to both our own first-party AI models and third-party tools (used to generate visual assets like 2D images and sprites)," the spokesperson said said, later confirming the feature shown in the stream was from a third-party tool. "Our first-party AI models are trained only on licensed or open-source data—not unlicensed assets." They noted that third-party tools are being developed by external providers who may use models like Stable Diffusion or GPT-Image, "which means there's a chance copyrighted content could show up."

The spokesperson said Unity is working with external providers to prevent such incidents, and that it is flagging the Mickey Mouse generation from last Tuesday's stream as part of that effort. "Using unlicensed IP in a commercial project would violate both copyright law and our terms of service," they added.

Disney is baring its fangs at AI toolmakers that replicate its characters

Showing off Unity AI's ability to generate Mickey Mouse comes at a touchy moment for generative AI toolmakers. Mickey Mouse copyright holder Disney sued image generation developer Midjourney in June 2025 in partnership with Universal and called the company's tool "a bottomless pit of plagiarism."

Even developers not intending to violate other company's copyright may face risks when using AI tools that can recreate copyrighted material, says Nixon Peabody Intellectual Property Counsel David Kocan. "The primary legal risk for developers using AI tools used to generate copyrighted images is that the output may be substantially similar to someone else's protected work," he explained in an email to Game Developer. "Even if the developer didn't intend to infringe, if it looks similar it's likely to draw unwanted attention," such as cease-and-desist letters, takedown notices, or a lawsuit.

"Legal risk doesn't necessarily stop at the source—it can often flow downstream."

Unity has done its best to reassure developers developers about the safety of its generative AI tools when it comes to copyright risks. Its initial rollout of Unity Muse and Unity Sentis, along with a marketplace of "AI-Verified Solutions" was meant to let developers access tools without fear of violating copyright.

24 hours later, the company removed a tool called "Atlas" from its marketplace for violating its terms of service. This was after developers noticed that many of the assets provided by Atlas looked distinctly similar to 3D models found on Sketchfab.

Read Entire Article