(Credit: Google)
Google DeepMind's new Project Genie AI tool is something a little different. Instead of answering chatbot prompts more (or even less) effectively than the last model, this one lets you craft an entire 3D world to explore with just a short text prompt.
It's designed to make it easier to train AI agents in 3D navigable environments, but for now, the coolest way to use it seems to be making Nintendo knock-offs, as The Verge reports.
We first heard about the Genie 3 AI model behind this latest project in August, when Google talked up its new 720p resolution and improved visual consistency. It can hold a world together for a few minutes at a time, allowing you to quickly whip up just about any 3D environment you can imagine. It's not the same as a designed and rendered level from game designers, artists, and programmers, but it offered a window into how we might make video games in the future.
While the backlash to even AI concept art in the game design process suggests most people aren't up for playing Slop Simulator-2026, Project Genie is an impressive piece of technology. It's an important step toward more general intelligence AIs and better-functioning physical AIs, like robots, which can leverage world models to learn more about the 3D worlds they interact with.
In its announcement, Google also showcases how to build virtual worlds from source images for inspiration. Snapping a picture of a cardboard cutout on an engineering table becomes a little animated cardboard pal wandering around and exploring that same world, only virtually. The same goes for pets, robots, or anything else you can think of.
You can see how this could be useful for anyone developing robotics. Quickly develop virtual versions of your test environment to train the robots. Once they've managed that, you can create a more challenging environment for them to try without risking damage to your hardware.
If you'd like to try Project Genie, you'll need to be an adult (18+) and have a Google AI Ultra subscription, which costs $250 per month. That's not pocket change for an experimental tool. As AI hardware efficiency improves, perhaps the price will come down in turn, though until anyone is actually making money with AI, I wouldn't hold my breath.