Google has unveiled Genie 2, a revolutionary AI-driven technology that can generate playable 3D environments based on image or text-based prompts in seconds, depending on the level of compute used. In a blog post, the DeepMind team shared footage of explorable worlds being traversed after being created by Genie 2 based on nothing but an initial text prompt.
It’s rudimentary at this stage, but it’s a direct evolution of Genie 1, which could generate 2D environments. It’s enough to make you wonder what Genie 3 might look like, that’s for sure.
The Age of AI
Developers have been toying with AI for a while to aid game development, but Genie 2 goes one step further. This technology is a foundational step towards using AI to generate an entire game, as shown by the DeepMind team in a recent blog post.
In one clip, the team prompts Genie 2 to generate ‘a playable world driving a sailboat on a lake’, and although what follows is obviously an AI-generated segment, it’s exactly what the prompt asked for.
In another scene, it’s a robot running around a forest, and in another, it’s someone exploring an abandoned spaceship.
Here’s a description of Genie 2 from DeepMind:
Genie 2 is a world model, meaning it can simulate virtual worlds, including the consequences of taking any action (e.g. jump, swim, etc.).
It was trained on a large-scale video dataset and, like other generative models, demonstrates various emergent capabilities at scale, such as object interactions, complex character animation, physics, and the ability to model and thus predict the behavior of other agents.
It’s still limited, though. Genie 2 can only generate consistent worlds for up to 60 seconds. In the showcase, everything from racing gamers to platformers was explored, with Genie 2 going so far as to create interactable environments containing bursting balloons, working doors, and exploding barrels.
It can even accurately render reflections and directional lighting, and it can take a single shot of concept art and use it to bring that envisioned environment to life.
Is this technology dangerous or do you want to see more of it? Let us know on the GPlayr forum.
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