On May 6, the Yujiang District People's Court of Yingtan City, Jiangxi Province publicly announced the verdict of the country's first "AI plug-in" case, and sentenced the defendant Wang Mouhe to three years in prison, suspended for five years, and fined for the crime of providing intrusion and illegal control of computer information system programs and tools. confiscate the defendant's unlawful gains and seized tools of the crime and turn them over to the state treasury; The remaining unlawful gains of individuals who have not been returned will continue to be recovered. Wang Mouhe said that he would obey the verdict and would not appeal.
The amount involved in the "AI plug-in" case was as high as more than 3,000 yuan, and the defendant Wang Mouhe made illegal profits totaling more than 6.29 million yuan. The hidden and lucrative black industry chain has come to light today, why is the game plug-in in the era of artificial intelligence punished? What are the changes in the composition of the offences? Sister Sa's team will take you to find out today.
01 What is so special about "AI plug-ins"?
In this case, Wang Mouhe, the main culprit of the criminal gang, is only 26 years old and was a practitioner in the field of AI, at the beginning of 2021, Wang came into contact with FPS games (First-person Shooting Game), and accidentally saw an explanation video introducing "AI plug-ins", and he bought and used plug-ins by himself. After several attempts, Wang successively contacted Wan Mouzhi, Zhang and others in 2022 to write an "AI plug-in" program. After the program was completed, Wang used the online platform to recruit Chen Mouyong, Zhang Mouwen and others as agent sales programs, and obtained profits by selling external point card passwords. At the time of the case, Wang Mouhe made illegal profits totaling more than 6.29 million yuan, paid more than 840,000 yuan to the production cost of Wan, and paid more than 420,000 yuan to Zhang's production cost.
It was determined that the "cvc" and other programs involved in the case had unauthorized access to game screen data in a number of games, unauthorized modification of the mouse data instructions processed in the game, and added the functions of "automatic aiming" and "automatic shooting" in the game, which interfered with the normal operating environment of the game and was a destructive program. The source code of the box program has the function of receiving the mouse data instruction transmitted by the USB port of the computer, calculating and analyzing the instruction, and then sending the calculation result to the USB port of the computer, so as to realize the function of controlling the automatic movement and clicking of the mouse pointer of the computer. [1]
Compared with traditional game plug-ins, "AI plug-ins" do not need to rely on and obtain any game memory data, but completely transmit operation data to the game through visual recognition of game screens and big data model computing. Especially for FPS first-person shooter games, the versatility of AI plug-ins has been greatly exerted, and it can be achieved by using a relatively simple object detection YOLO algorithm - analyzing the game screen, locating enemies, moving the crosshair, and headshot. According to the relevant analysis of algorithm workers, the use of such "AI self-aiming plug-ins" in real-world games such as "Call of Duty" and "GTA-5" is simple to use, low computing power consumption, easy operation and reproducibility, so the plug-in can be said to be devastating to conquer most FPS game platforms.
At the same time, because there is no need to read and modify the game's memory data (which is actually a condition for traditional anti-cheat program detection), this kind of "AI plug-in" is more hidden, and its interaction method is no different from that of human players, all through "looking", so it is more difficult to be monitored by anti-cheat programs.
02 How is the criminal law regulating the "super individuals" who produce and sell AI plug-ins?
As early as 2019, there were a large number of game plug-in production and sales platforms, such as the largest "fork assistant" at that time, which formed a good closed-loop business model and innovatively created an aggregation plug-in platform. In addition to selling game scripts, there are also order-grabbing scripts such as food delivery software and online car-hailing. The employees of the platform are responsible for operation and maintenance, and there are 2,000 script developers who are in contact with the platform, and the amount involved exceeds 100 million yuan after the case is solved. In the case of "Fork Assistant", it is necessary to carefully consider the allocation of criminal liability between the platform and the individual, because the production and sale of game scripts are obviously separated, and the script author does not participate in the operation of the platform, so the impact on the scope, amount, number of personnel and other elements involved is limited, and it should be handled in layers. [2]
In this case of "AI plug-in", it is possible to achieve mass sales of plug-ins by relying on fewer code writers, but in fact, with the blessing of artificial intelligence technology, the writing process of game data is reduced, the cost is reduced and the efficiency is increased, which is conducive to rapid operations. Then, in the relatively flat and integrated personnel management, there is no obvious link separation between the writer and the sales agent, and in fact, it seems difficult to eliminate the subjective illegality of the script writer.
On the issue of the application of the offence. First, the usual platform model, which uses game data to compile scripts and then sell them within the platform, may infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of game manufacturers or game software copyright owners according to Article 217 of the Criminal Law, and is suspected of constituting the crime of copyright infringement. In this AI plug-in case, although the game environment was damaged by operating the mouse and other commands such as automatic aiming, it did not involve the problem of copying and distributing the data of the game itself, so there was almost no risk of infringing software copyright.
Second, with regard to Article 285 of the Criminal Law, which stipulates the crime of illegally obtaining data from computer information systems and illegally controlling computer information systems, AI plug-ins do not constitute this crime because they do not intrude into the data stored, processed or transmitted by computer information systems.
Finally, according to the third paragraph of Article 285 of the Criminal Law and Article 2 (2) of the Interpretation of the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Handling Criminal Cases Endangering the Security of Computer Information Systems, "having the function of circumventing or breaking through the security protection measures of the computer information system and exercising control over the computer information system without authorization or beyond authorization" shall constitute the crime of providing programs or tools for invading or illegally controlling the computer information system. It can be seen that the Yujiang District People's Court of Yingtan City was very accurate in convicting and sentencing the defendant Wang this time.
For game competition, the use of plug-ins not only destroys the balance of the game environment, puts ordinary players in an unequal situation, and reduces the willingness to play; At the same time, it also affects the economic benefits of game operators, and additional resources must be invested in countering cheats, which may also increase the risk of viruses in the system itself or be used for other cybercriminal activities due to the destruction of operating procedures. The verdict of the first case of "AI plug-in" has sounded the alarm for compliance risks such as system and data security in the game industry.
03 Write at the end
For example, Tencent analyzes all the data of gamers in operation through the "Replay solution", uses AI to detect AI in real time, and identifies abnormal fluctuations in mouse input, etc., which can quickly find out the plug-in and ban the account to maintain system security.
New technologies are always accompanied by new ethics, and the ethical norms that we are accustomed to upholding under the framework of old technologies may be challenged or even caught in the net. For this kind of multiplayer online competitive game in this case, writing scripts and producing and selling plug-ins not only greatly undermines fairness, but also easily causes systemic risks, and will also be subject to key supervision by law enforcement authorities in the future. For all programmers, it is important to treat technology neutrality correctly and promote technology for good, so as not to suffer from prison time; For game operators, it is also necessary to maintain a high degree of attention to the security of the platform, and promptly ban external players; As a gamer, you must raise your awareness of the law, refuse to use cheats, and actively maintain a good gaming environment.
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[1] Yujiang District People's Court, Yingtan City, Work Dynamics: "The First Instance Public Judgment of the First Instance of the "AI Plug-in" Case in China, http://yujiang.jxfy.gov.cn/article/detail/2024/05/id/7927532.shtml
[2] See Liu Yanhong, "The Criminal Law System of Online Game Plug-ins in the Era of Artificial Intelligence", Journal of East China University of Political Science and Law, No. 1, 2022.
Source: Xiao Sa LAwyer
编辑：Sharon