Epic says Unreal EULA update lets developers choose AI training on projects

Epic Games says an update to the Unreal Engine end-user licence agreement lets licensees choose AI training on their Unreal Engine and MetaHuman projects. The company presents the change as a choice for developers and says the update does not give Epic new rights to their content or code.

In its October 29 announcement, Epic identified two restrictions it says it removed from section 6(e): one relating to the use of Unreal Engine and source code as training inputs, and another covering specified MetaHuman characters, curves and rendered output. The currently served EULA does not contain those AI clauses in that section; a complete authenticated comparison with the earlier agreement has not been established.

Epic says new users will receive a prompt for the updated agreement, while existing users may choose to accept it under the agreement’s amendment and access conditions. A prompt is not the same as acceptance, and the announcement does not establish which terms any particular user has accepted.

The company also says Fab sellers’ NoAI choices remain, while Fortnite islands, UEFN and Verse use different terms and custom agreements continue to govern their users. Those separate agreements and permissions for individual assets have not been examined here.

Two days before Epic’s announcement, Imran Khan’s Game Developer report described the planned change and reported that developers would retain control over individual-game terms. The article placed the plan in a debate over protecting game intellectual property and AI development and reported a response from Epic chief executive Tim Sweeney. Epic’s later explanation emphasizes licensee choice; the earlier article and later announcement describe different stages, rather than establishing a factual contradiction.

Rowan Finch analysis: A licence concerning an engine or a developer’s own project addresses one part of a training-data question. A project can also contain material controlled by others, and Epic itself identifies content and agreements with different terms. The distinction between a licensee’s project choice and rights in someone else’s work therefore matters to the scope of the announcement. The available documents do not settle a particular user’s rights or show what training actually takes place.