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Google's Project Genie Lets You Generate Your Own Interactive Worlds 28

Google is letting outsiders experiment with DeepMind's Genie 3 "world model" via Project Genie, a tool for generating short, interactive AI worlds. The caveat: it requires a $250/month AI Ultra subscription, is U.S.-only, and has tight limits that make it more of a tech demo than a game engine. Engadget reports: At launch, Project Genie offers three different modes of interaction: World Sketching, exploration and remixing. The first sees Google's Nano Banana Pro model generating the source image Genie 3 will use to create the world you will later explore. At this stage, you can describe your character, define the camera perspective -- be it first-person, third-person or isometric -- and how you want to explore the world Genie 3 is about to generate. Before you can jump into the model's creation, Nano Banana Pro will "sketch" what you're about to see so you can make tweaks. It's also possible to write your own prompts for worlds others have used Genie to generate.

One thing to keep in mind is that Genie 3 is not a game engine. While its outputs can look game-like, and it can simulate physical interactions, there aren't traditional game mechanics here. Generations are also limited to 60 seconds, as is the presentation, which is capped at 24 frames per second and 720p.
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Google's Project Genie Lets You Generate Your Own Interactive Worlds

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  • by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Thursday January 29, 2026 @07:41PM (#65957802) Journal

    they own everything you create, and you get to pay for that "privilege".

    • Re: And no doubt... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Thursday January 29, 2026 @11:49PM (#65958098)

      Think of it this way, it can be work, where they pay you to paint the fence or give feedback for their model training, or they can have you pay and paint the fence by giving you "exclusive access" to their ultra cutting edge stuff.

      Your choice, really.

    • Who cares, the point of this is transient creation, and you're not the one creating anything, they are.

      Look I'm often critical of the "you have to own everything" crowd, but your complaint is even more nonsensical than normal. No one is using this to own the output.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    With such a phallic name, Google has officially become the new Microsoft.

  • by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Thursday January 29, 2026 @07:53PM (#65957810)

    Lemme see... Yep, people will use it to generate porn. 100%

  • At launch, Project Genie offers three different modes of interaction: World Sketching, exploration and remixing.

    That's two. Where is the third?

  • Is it spatial 3D/360 interactive worlds which would be awesome for using with a VR headset.
  • LOL, kidding, you psychopaths.

    Who in their right mind would pay that much for this crap?

    • by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Thursday January 29, 2026 @08:54PM (#65957886)

      LOL, kidding, you psychopaths.

      Who in their right mind would pay that much for this crap?

      Game studios who want their art directors to feed prompts to via command like to a GenAI, and iterate and refine those prompts until s/he is satisfied with the overall look, feenm and interactions on the level before showing the result of that and thelling the artists and level designers "build that on the level editor" instead of the current method which is:

      Send a bunch of initial prompts via email to the level designers and artists, the level gets contructed in the level editor, the level is not to the liking of the Art director, more propmpts ensue, lather rinse repeat, until the level is to the liking of the Art Director.

      Tools like this will significantly shorten the "lather, rise, repeat cycle", whic saves time and money. The ammount of people remais roughly the same.

    • LOL, kidding, you psychopaths.

      Who in their right mind would pay that much for this crap?

      Yeah, my brain still hears that amount and thinks more like "car payment" ...

  • Once we are at the point when there is plenty of compute to generate 4k (or VR equivalent) video or interactive content based on a user's unstructured input, what else is there? If Moore's law becomes dead soon does it matter?
    • by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      Once we are at the point when there is plenty of compute to generate 4k (or VR equivalent) video or interactive content based on a user's unstructured input, what else is there? If Moore's law becomes dead soon does it matter?

      You'll always have bitcoins to mine -- your computer will never be fast enough unless it's faster than the other guy's, and vice-versa.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Ah, the end of computing again.

      4k is pretty shite for VR. The equivalent of my 4k monitor at a comfortable 1.5 m distance in a VR display 10 mm from my eyeball is... a lot more ks. Per eye. So that'll occupy us for a while. By then we'll probably be looking for some other senses too.

      Not to mention that none of this is happening on your "individual computi" but rather on some giant pile of video cards that Google is still probably losing money renting to you for $250 a month.

  • by fleeped ( 1945926 ) on Thursday January 29, 2026 @09:06PM (#65957900)

    the time interval between Slashdot's posting of AI stories

  • Instead of prompt-building a world, use Second Life as the modeler.

    It has a camera, geometry, and metadata to model off of, and tons of source world already built.
    The hard parts; hosting, navigation, scripting, network, and money are already implemented.
    Best, there's an experienced user community that gets it, and is willing to pay for it.

  • It looks like a version of Minecraft/Hytale/name your world generation game minus the game mechanics.
  • Because a lot of people just treated his background noise. So you can get away with that.

    I'm not going to play your slop AI game because it's going to play like crap.

    Super meat boy had years of tweaking to the physics to make the game fun. It was done manually by human beings no AI can do that because it's way too subjective.

    Now that said you could probably use AI to crap out of call of duty sequel every year. Or more fortnite expansions. But the core gameplay needs to already be there and tweak
    • This so called slop will satiate 99% of peoples gaming desires. Imagine you put in a prompt for "A GTA5 style game, set in star trek TNG's world". You spawn on the streets of a scifi san fransisco, steal the shuttle Galileo, fly it into orbit, warp to deep space 9, and blow up the station. AI can do that in a day. It would take a team of 500 humans 7 years to craft such a game manually, AND it would only be made if demand and profit existed. But the AI only has to profit on the hours spent rendering the gam
      • "A GTA5 style game, set in star trek TNG's world". You spawn on the streets of a scifi san fransisco, steal the shuttle Galileo, fly it into orbit, warp to deep space 9, and blow up the station. A

        The concept is cool, but I'm afraid the gameplay would have as much interest as the prompt. That is, the game itself would only be fun for a few minutes.

        • That, much like AI art, will come down to prompt engineering. If you prompt it for GTA5 you'll get the gameplay of GTA5, etc. or you can even ask it "blend GTA5's gameplay with FF7's" and it'll give you riviting turn based combat, etc.

Tomorrow's computers some time next month. -- DEC

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