AI-Generated Content on Nexus Mods

All those are legitimate concerns worthy of discussion, and because of this, we took part in many of them. We've read your conversations happening in Discord channels and in comment sections, and we held lengthy and frank conversations with Mod Authors, those who have been working on mods for more than a decade and those who published their first creation. We heard authors who were afraid of seeing their work reused without permission, players who only want to download the mod created by a real person and creators who use these tools to start modding. I’ve included some of those conversations and perspectives at the end, shared with permission, so you can hear directly from some of the people who’ve helped shape these discussions.

The whole community of Nexus Mods was based on people sharing their creativity by giving their time and effort for others to enjoy their creations. That is what makes our community unique, and I would like us to preserve this. All your voices formed each of the decisions made in this post. As for the delay in our response, that is my fault, and I should have prioritised this topic before. I can assure you that we will follow through and keep you updated as we make those changes.

Here is what we decided to do and what will change.

We are pro-human creativity. That's the basic premise behind all decisions below.

We won't introduce an outright ban on AI-generated mods. You may ask me why, since that is not the solution some of you were looking for. The answer is simple: AI is currently used throughout the whole process of creation, from script autocompletion to generation of textures, voices, and full assets, and it is difficult to draw a clear boundary between what is acceptable and unacceptable. An outright ban will not eliminate AI from the modding process but will prevent people from mentioning its use. We'd prefer the opposite; it should be out in the open, clearly labelled, and regulated according to the rules that we can implement on our platform.

This doesn't mean that any work done using AI will get removed; AI-generated mods are welcome on our platform provided that they meet certain criteria regarding permissions, transparency, presentation, and conduct. Mod Authors should have a chance to decide about the further use of their work, and you should be able to decide for yourselves how much AI-based content you want to see, whether more, less, or no content at all.

As for our own position: Nexus Mods will not use your mods to train AI and will not sell or license them to anyone doing so. We refused to do that in the past, and we will refuse to do so in the future.

Given such a variety of opinions within our community, not everyone will agree with any decision taken. These are the ones we believe are right for Nexus Mods today, and we’ll keep adjusting them as the tools evolve and as we see how these changes work in practice, with your feedback guiding that.

With that in mind, here’s what we are changing. 

One of the most consistent concerns we’ve heard is that it’s not clearly disclosed when AI has been used to create a mod. We already have tags for AI-generated and AI-assisted mods, but we recognise that there’s a lot more we can do to make that information more accessible and clear for you all. As of today, we're making AI disclosure mandatory when uploading a new mod, meaning Mod Authors will need to declare whether AI has been used in their work. All existing mods will have one of two popups: a persistent one when editing a mod in the upload form, and a dismissible one on the “My Mods” page.

What this means is that for mods tagged as AI-assisted, we’re also introducing a requirement for a public explanation of how and where AI was used, which should give you a better understanding of what you’re downloading, rather than leaving you to make assumptions on a tag alone. We’re also going to make AI tags on mod pages more prominent, displaying them immediately after adult-content tags so they’re easier to spot.

While we hope these changes will encourage everyone to disclose their AI usage, to be honest, that’s not going to happen. Additionally, we are putting clear moderation standards in place, enforced with consequences for breaking the rules. You can read more about our plans regarding this later in this post.

Another important part of this discussion has been permissions. Mod Authors put an enormous amount of time and effort into their mods, and they should have clearer control over how they can be reused by others. We’re working on introducing new permission options covering AI usage and training, as well as forks and derivative mods.

These new permissions will default to “Ask me”, meaning permission will need to be granted rather than assumed, and we’ll also be making it clearer during the upload process that Mod Authors need to actively confirm their permissions as well. Your existing permissions on your mods won’t be reset as part of these changes.

We’ll also be strengthening our approach to attribution, so where a mod uses another Mod Author’s mod with the appropriate permissions, we expect that contribution to be properly credited, with a link back to the original one.

I’ll be honest with you all, there are some details we still need to figure out and work through, especially when it comes to existing licences, forks, and how permissions apply to different versions of a mod. But we want to get this right, and not rush through changes that could cause more problems further down the line. This does mean that these improvements will take longer to deliver, but we hope what we have planned for now is a good first step, and you’ll bear with us whilst we continue to move in the right direction.

Some of you would prefer not to see any AI-generated content, and that’s your decision to make. We’re refining content preference tools so you can enable this control directly from game pages and the homepage, rather than having to find it in the settings. Next up, we'll bring these controls into search and the way mods are displayed on game homepages.

In addition, we’ve received feedback regarding authors uploading numerous mods at once and overwhelming the Recently Added section, pushing everyone else down the page. This is less of an issue related to AI, but it’s becoming much more prevalent as mod production is speeding up. Thus, we’re trying out limits on the number of mods from one author that can be shown in this section to give others a better chance of getting noticed. We’re also putting tighter restrictions on uploads from newly created accounts. The first of these updates will be available soon.

We have a dedicated team developing search and discovery to assist you in finding the best mods and help new authors be discovered. You’ll hear more about the process in our monthly update articles.

This is one of the toughest categories, and we've spent quite some time on it. Some of the questions we kept coming back to:

• If an author takes a legitimate in-game screenshot but uses AI to simply add a title or text overlay to it, is this an AI-generated thumbnail?
• How about a legitimate screenshot that has been upscaled or enhanced with AI?
• What should be the thumbnail of a script or a framework mod that has nothing visual to showcase, but rather adds functionality behind the scenes? Would AI-generated artwork be allowed there if it is clearly not trying to pass as in-game?
• And what about an AI-generated "screenshot" showcasing features the mod doesn't actually offer?
  

We are not planning to introduce additional restrictions for those gray zones right now, but will wait and see how mandatory disclosure and improved tags/content preferences can help with addressing them. However, this discussion is not over yet. We would particularly like to hear your input on ensuring the accuracy of thumbnails and media of the mod you are downloading.

We have heard feedback about the problem with an author getting Donation Points for fully AI-generated mods or a forked version of someone else’s work. This is a very serious matter, and we have included it in our list to find a durable long-term solution.  

We've run the numbers on this, and so far this year, mods with the "AI-Generated Content" tag received 2.13% of all Donation Points. We feel this is a comfortably low percentage, but we'll continue to monitor this share over time; for now, we aren't changing any of the rules around mod rewards. We hope that the new permissions, policy updates and discovery controls help ensure that Donation Points go to mod authors who continue to play fairly and by the rules.

There are two reasons why we are being extra cautious with this matter. The first is that Donation Points are directly connected to how authors get recognition and earn money; therefore, we have to be precise about them. Another one is that making authors lose their earnings because of disclosing AI could give people a motive not to do so, which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid.

Forks are a bit different. They’re part of the permissions work above, and content that uses another author’s work without permission will not be hosted on Nexus Mods.

We’ll share more once we’ve worked through it properly.

We are very aware of the valid concerns of the community that come with the rise of AI, making it far faster to make bespoke malicious code hidden inside mods. We are committed to making sure that we handle that appropriately, and we’re investing in security tooling and specialised staff to handle this exact concern. To give you all insight into how we’re currently handling this, of the uploads made between November 2025 and October 2026, 3,164 have been manually reviewed and cleared by our team, more than four times the previous year’s figure. Over the last year, 20,000 uploads were quarantined for further security checks, which is 12x the previous year. Where we have concerns about safety or a mod’s undisclosed behaviour that remain unresolved, we request source code to help us investigate further. Mod Authors are not obliged to provide it, but we may decline to continue hosting it where those concerns cannot be resolved.

I think it's really important to set expectations with you all; these changes won't all arrive at once. Our immediate focus is on improving AI disclosure and making AI-related information more visible. As I mentioned before, other changes, particularly around permissions and discovery, will follow when we're happy with a solution and as the work is completed.

We'll also be introducing a 60-day grace period for existing mods to meet the new requirements, giving Mod Authors time to review their mods and make any necessary changes to them. This grace period starts today (3rd November 2026) and ends on 2nd January 2027. During this period, our Trust & Safety team will continue to review reports and help Mod Authors understand what they'll need to do. Once the 60-day grace period ends on 2nd January 2027, we will start directly enforcing these rules. Authors will be notified and asked to fix missing disclosures or permission settings. Continued failure to update a mod following a staff notification will result in moderation action, account restrictions, warnings or removal from Nexus Mods.

The full new rules regarding AI usage can be found here.

I also want to be realistic about enforcement: identifying AI-generated content is by no means an exact science, and initially, a lot of this work will continue to rely on manual moderation and reports from you, our community. We won't catch everything, and there may be some cases where something has been incorrectly tagged or missed, but it's important that if you come across something you believe isn't following our rules, you please continue to report it so our team can investigate. 

As I said before, this is a complicated subject, and I don't expect everyone to agree with every decision we've made, or will make in the future. We've had to consider many sides and preferences when discussing it all; some people would prefer to prohibit AI-generated content entirely, while others embrace it and want fewer restrictions. We've considered both sides, but ultimately we need to make decisions we believe are right for Nexus Mods and our community as a whole.

For me, that means continuing to support creativity while making sure our Mod Authors have meaningful control over their work, that AI usage is transparent, and that you all have more of a say over what you see on the site.

This is definitely not a conversation we're going to have once and consider it done. AI is constantly developing, and the way it's used in modding will also keep changing, and because of that, our policies will need to evolve alongside it.

Of course, technology will continue to change, and so will the tools people use to make mods, but the reason Nexus Mods exists - why we exist here - hasn't changed. We're here, as we always have been, to support the people who make modding possible, to celebrate their creativity, and to give them a place to share their work with the world. For us, that's what being pro-human creativity means, and it's what will continue to guide the decisions we make.

I'd like to personally thank everyone who's taken the time to share their thoughts, raised concerns, and contributed to these late-night discussions. Whether you've been making mods for years, are just getting started, or you're enjoying discovering what other people create, your involvement matters, and we'll continue to share updates as these changes roll out.

Victor

Throughout our discussions about AI, we’ve heard from Mod Authors and members of our community about the impact it’s having on mods, the experience of the site, and what they’d like to see us do differently.

I wanted to share some of those perspectives with you directly. The quotes below have been shared with permission and reflect some of the concerns and feedback we’ve received while working through these decisions, and to be clear, these by no means mean that these people agree with our decisions announced above.

These aren’t intended to represent everyone’s views, and we know there are plenty of different opinions on the subject. But I think it’s important to give some space to the people who’ve taken the time to speak with us and help us understand the issues we’re facing.