Google’s Artificial Intelligence Could Create Your Own Video Game
Generative AI has come a long way in just the last year. First, ChatGPT has amazed us with what it can do with text, and programs like Midjourney and DALL-E have learned how to create images from simple clues. Others, like OpenAI’s Sora, can now generate videos in the same way.
Perhaps that’s why I’m not surprised to learn that Google DeepMind researchers have now created a program for creating 2D video games . Genie, as the researchers have dubbed the program, can actually make you a playable platformer, although it seems to require a little more effort than, say, Midjourney needs to make you a picture.
Jeanie is trained on over 200,000 hours of 2D platformer gameplay videos (all of which are publicly available). This content teaches the bot the basics of designing 2D platformers; it can even distinguish game elements from static backgrounds and interfaces. Genie can use drawings, animations, real images and text descriptions to create a game.
Before you get too impressed, take a look at some of the results . These Genie-made games won’t be appearing on the Nintendo eShop anytime soon. In fact, they look pretty terrible. I think they’re more like someone dreaming of playing a video game: the elements are blurry, the movement is fast and choppy, and there’s not much for the player to do . Also, unlike many early AI projects, Genie isn’t yet user-centric, so it’s impossible to say what the average result is or how much tweaking it took to get the samples we were shown.
But the thing is, this is the first time we’ve seen Genie. As the model is trained and refined, its results will undoubtedly improve. Will Genie ever be able to create a fully playable game that you actually want to play? I don’t know. Will Sora ever be able to create a full video worth watching? These are questions that have no answer yet.
But what is true is that the better this technology gets, the more alarming it becomes: with the gaming industry already suffering from layoffs this year , I can’t imagine AI-generated games being useful for workers.
[ MSPowerUser ]