Google's new AI 'world model' has seemingly spooked videogame investors, but it's hard to know what it will actually lead to

Google launched a new AI product this week, and as Seeking Alpha points out, videogame-related stocks like Unity and Take-Two took a dip. If those share price fluctuations really were a reaction to Project Genie, which was first revealed last year and is said to generate interactive “worlds,” it’s awfully premature—this doesn’t do anything to GTA 6’s prospects, let’s be real.But The Verge gave it a go, and was able to produce what the site called “bad Nintendo knockoffs,” which is certainly interesting.Google calls its current Project Genie model, Genie 3, an “experimental research prototype” (a funny name for something it’s selling access to for $250 per month as part of its “AI Ultra” subscription) and says it enables users to “create, explore and remix their own interactive worlds.””Unlike explorable experiences in static 3D snapshots, Genie 3 generates the path ahead in real time as you move and interact with the world,” Google said in a blog post. “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.”As a recent GDC survey showed, creative workers in the games industry are becoming increasingly hostile to generative AI, and Genie 3 has predictably not landed for everyone as the great benefit to humanity that Google says it’s aiming for. “For once, CC: legal@nintendo.com,” joked developer Rami Ismail about The Verge’s Genie-generated Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda knock-offs. (The Verge…

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