Google Releases Project Genie and People Immediately Jump to Conclusions

AI companies are desperately trying to turn up the hype machine and Google has stepped forward with Project Genie.

Things are most decidedly not looking good in the world of AI right now. Public buy-in for the technology is not meeting expectations and documents revealed that OpenAI stands to lose $14 billion over the course of this year alone. While we are continuously marching closer to the moment the AI bubble will finally pop, AI companies continuously rely on the one tool that has kept the bubble from bursting over the last year and a half: hype.

While investors are continuing to get restless over when they are going to finally see a return, companies are constantly reassuring them that the check is already practically in the mail. Just give it a little more time and it’ll happen, honest! The next industrial revolution is practically on the verge of appearing. I think that, behind the scenes, even they know that they are royally screwed and are living on borrowed time at this stage. All those promises are going to become obvious exaggerations even to the most enthusiastic supporters sooner or later. So, the only thing they can do at this stage is continue the lies and empty promises through just a little more hype. Anything to keep this charade going.

So it is of no surprise that I check the news today and see even more obviously exaggerated hype. This comes in the form of Project Genie from Google. Google, unsurprisingly, announced this release in a posting, saying that it’s supposed to allow people to create interactive 3D worlds. From Google:

In August, we previewed Genie 3, a general-purpose world model capable of generating diverse, interactive environments. Even in this early form, trusted testers were able to create an impressive range of fascinating worlds and experiences, and uncovered entirely new ways to use it. The next step is to broaden access through a dedicated, interactive prototype focused on immersive world creation.

Starting today, we’re rolling out access to Project Genie for Google AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S (18+). This experimental research prototype lets users create, explore and remix their own interactive worlds.

How we’re advancing world models

A world model simulates the dynamics of an environment, predicting how they evolve and how actions affect them. While Google DeepMind has a history of agents for specific environments like Chess or Go, building AGI requires systems that navigate the diversity of the real world.

To meet this challenge and support our AGI mission, we developed Genie 3. Unlike explorable experiences in static 3D snapshots, Genie 3 generates the path ahead in real time as you move and interact with the world. It simulates physics and interactions for dynamic worlds, while its breakthrough consistency enables the simulation of any real-world scenario — from robotics and modelling animation and fiction, to exploring locations and historical settings.

Building on our model research with trusted testers from across industries and domains, we are taking the next step with an experimental research prototype: Project Genie.

It’s a sales pitch, plain and simple. Yes, DeepMind was able to do some very fascinating things with games like Chess and Go, but those are very specific environments. Broadening out to just randomly generate environments in general is going to be a much taller order – and an order I’m not convinced AI is doing all that well in general outside of the world of scamming people.

Obviously, the possibilities of this are fairly limited, but that isn’t stopping some people from jumping to conclusions. From Reuters:

Shares of videogame companies fell sharply in afternoon trading on Friday after Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab rolled out its artificial intelligence model capable of creating interactive digital worlds with simple prompts.

Shares of “Grand Theft Auto” maker Take-Two Interactive (TTWO.O), opens new tab fell 10%, online gaming platform Roblox (RBLX.N), opens new tab was down over 12%, while videogame engine maker Unity Software (U.N), opens new tab dropped 21%.

The AI model, dubbed “Project Genie”, allows users to simulate a real-world environment through prompts with text or uploaded images, potentially disrupting how video games have been made for over a decade and forcing developers to adapt to the fast-moving technology.

“Unlike explorable experiences in static 3D snapshots, Genie 3 generates the path ahead in real time as you move and interact with the world. It simulates physics and interactions for dynamic worlds,” Google said in a blog post on Thursday.

Traditionally, most videogames are built inside a game engine such as Epic Games’ “Unreal Engine” or the “Unity Engine”, which handles complex processes like in-game gravity, lighting, sound, and object or character physics.

“We’ll see a real transformation in development and output once AI-based design starts creating experiences that are uniquely its own, rather than just accelerating traditional workflows,” said Joost van Dreunen, games professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business.

The only way you could possibly come to those conclusions is if you are clueless about both video games and generative AI – a common problem with mainstream media, really. So, let me explain how things work in the real world – not that the mainstream media is ever destined to understand any of this in the first place. Worth a shot to explain this now so I can make fun of the mainstream media later when they invariably screw this story up.

First of all, video games are overwhelmingly about more than just wandering through an environment. Sure, exploring an environment is a component of a lot of games, but it’s by no means a main draw. A lot of the emphasis is on the “why” aspect. Why are players exploring that environment? Sometimes, it’s to build up experience points. Sometimes, it’s to complete an objective. Other times, it’s to help a character in a game in some way. The fact that a given environment happens to be really cool can be an added bonus, but it is not the reason to do so.

Take, for example, Super Mario Bros. 3 as an example. Are you travelling throughout different worlds? Yes. Why are you travelling through those worlds? To rescue Princess Peach. You could have an endless supply of different examples of this too. In Timesplitters 2, you are trying to get your hands on time crystals along the way. In Ratchet & Clank, you are stopping Dr. Nefarious. In Left 4 Dead, you are trying to escape a zombie takeover.

What’s more, people play games, in part, because they like having that shared experience. Do you remember that part in that game and how annoying it was to get past that part? That’s one topic that gamers like talking about. I could go on.

If you randomly generate an environment and allow people to just walk through it, that’s not necessarily going to be a huge draw. It’s a much more dry experience because people already have access to things like travel blogs and video footage of different locations. Gaming is uniquely interactive as it challenges players to think about what to say to different characters, how to overcome an obstacle, or how things in general progress through plot and character development. An environment is merely a component of that experience, not the entire experience. So, to jump to the conclusion that an interactive environment is somehow going to replace game development is extremely presumptuous.

Then there’s the AI side of things. This is far from the first time we’ve even had this debate. For instance, back in 2024, Sora was released and it was supposed to somehow generate video games. At the time, people in the media flipped out that this was going to potentially be the end of gaming development and put into question trademark laws surrounding games and whatnot. Even back then, I was rolling my eyes at the nonsense. This for the simple reason that Sora was creating low quality short video clips, not actual games themselves. Unsurprisingly, we still have game companies making games and people aren’t playing exclusively AI generated games.

Around the same year, other kinds of AI was just generating images so you could, in theory, play games. It was interactive and… it sucked. A great example of what it was like is Code Bullet playing AI Minecraft. You can see the results for yourself:

Yeah, it’s that bad. It’s slow, the frame rate is terrible, the video quality is garbage, and the experience makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The thing is, even if you don’t take my examples as indicative of what AI is capable of, you can also simply look at the market reaction to all of this. Are people on a massive scale saying that it’s pointless to play games released by publishing companies because you can just play games through AI generation portals? Not even in the slightest.

Now, I know that there will be those that will insist by saying, “yeah, but, this could be different!” The reality is that I don’t see Project Genie even moving the needle on this front. For all the talk about interactivity, the announcement also had this to say:

Project Genie is an experimental research prototype in Google Labs, powered by Genie 3. As with all our work towards general AI systems, our mission is to build AI responsibly to benefit humanity. Since Genie 3 is an early research model, there are a few known areas for improvement:

• Generated worlds might not look completely true-to-life or always adhere closely to prompts or images, or real-world physics
• Characters can sometimes be less controllable, or experience higher latency in control
• Limitations in generations to 60 seconds

Those three bullet points should raise a hell of of a lot of questions about this whole project when looked through the lens of how this is supposed to replace the making of video games.

As a general rule, people tend to not like it when you limit their game time to about 10 minutes. Just imagine how much more frustrating it’ll be if you limit it all the way down to 60 seconds. That alone should make you laugh this project out of the room.

The other two points should pretty much seal the deal that this is by no means replacing game companies. First of all, the output is known to be a broken mess based on the prompts. Second of all, even if you do somehow manage to get this thing to work, the controls are going to be hot garbage on top of it all.

In short, at most, this produces a broken mess of an experience. Hardly the kind of thing that will somehow magically replace game production companies.

Of course, the last time people were hyperventilating about the end of humans making games was clear back in 2024, so that is also plenty of time to conveniently forget the last time AI was supposed to make game development by a human obsolete. It’s great conditions for the AI con artists and gullible media to start hyperventilating about how this is going to be the end of games made by humans as we know it. If that does happen, I’ll have my “fell for it again” awards ready to hand out.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.