Google shakes up game design with its new AI tool Genie
Google is hoping to win back favour in the AI community with the launch of their new video game generating assistant, Genie. Unveiled this week, Genie demonstrated an impressive ability to translate simple sketches, photos or text descriptions into fully playable virtual worlds, representing a major leap forward in procedurally generated content design.
The introduction of Genie comes amid renewed scrutiny around issues of bias and oversight in AI following criticism of Google's previous chatbot, Gemini. Genie had been trained on over 200,000 hours of public gaming videos without need for additional annotations, enabling it to instantly recognize characters and gameplay elements.
This highly advanced "Latent Action Model" allows users simple drag-and-drop control over characters in Genie's worlds. While games remain basic for now, the tool demonstrates huge potential for custom scenario and level design across genres.
Google will hope Genie wins favour where Gemini fell short, having faced backlash over inaccurate marketing claims and concerns about how its image generation could propagate harmful biases. With gaming an increasingly large revenue driver, Genie's procedurally generated content has massive implications for the once designer-led industry. Its intuitive interface ensures aspiring developers of all skill levels can experiment with game creation on a scale never before possible. Only time will tell if Genie can help Google to shape the future of game design in a responsible, inclusive manner.