Google’s new Genie 2 AI mannequin is right here, and it desires to suck the soul out of recreation design

Google’s DeepMind branch of AI researchers and engineers have formally launched a brand new know-how, dubbed Genie 2. This AI model is custom-built to generate totally playable 3D worlds and digital environments, corresponding to those you’d usually discover in open world video video games.

“At the moment we introduce Genie 2, a basis world mannequin able to producing an infinite number of action-controllable, playable 3D environments for coaching and evaluating embodied brokers. Primarily based on a single immediate picture, it may be performed by a human or AI agent utilizing keyboard and mouse inputs,” says Google in a DeepMind blog post.

DeepMind took to X with the announcement, and affords an in depth have a look at the know-how through an official web page hyperlink. What makes Genie 2 stand out from different AI solutions, is its capability to simulate the implications of taking actions like leaping and swimming inside its generated worlds.

Plenty of video samples are offered by the corporate, corresponding to one with a humanoid robotic within the woods, and one with a primary particular person view of a robotic on a purple planet. The graphics are definitely convincing, and it is remarkably spectacular to see the AI mannequin keep constant body charges whereas producing novel content material in actual time. Notably, there’s no game engine running behind the scenes right here, which is an enormous a part of what makes the entire thing so spectacular.

Genie 2 is spectacular, but it surely arrives with actual world implications

The place’s the craftsmanship in AI-generated world constructing?

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Whereas undoubtedly spectacular, the existence of one thing like Genie 2 raises necessary questions surrounding artistic artistry. At the moment, there is a human contact to world constructing that may be discovered inside most digital media. If a know-how like this have been to take maintain inside mainstream online game studios, for example, I really feel that one thing integral can be misplaced in translation.

When taking a look at an open-world online game like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it is instantly clear that the builders have taken delight in crafting an natural world crammed with human touches all all through. Other than the truth that many of those staff might doubtlessly lose their jobs, I am merely not satisfied that AI-generated recreation worlds will click on with me — not less than not in the identical approach as those constructed by people with a selected creative imaginative and prescient in thoughts.

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