An AI-powered copyright tool is taking down AI-generated Mario pictures

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Dozens of X posts containing images of Mario — including an AI-generated picture of the plumber holding a beer and a cigarette, created by The Verge using xAI’s Grok — were removed after a company called Tracer apparently used AI to identify the images and serve takedown notices on behalf of Nintendo.
According to an email received by The Verge’s Tom Warren, a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice was issued to X by “