Google has just started rolling out access to its new “experimental research prototype” Project Genie, an AI tool powered by Genie 3 and Gemini that allows users to create interactive, explorable worlds with a simple text prompt. Unsurprisingly, someone has immediately used it to generate a bunch of playable Nintendo knock-offs, including a The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild clone, complete with a usable paraglider. I’m sure that the famously non-litigious Nintendo will be absolutely chill about this.
This news comes by way of The Verge’s Jay Peters, who was granted access to Google’s Project Genie tool early, ahead of its official release for Google AI Ultra subscribers in the United States earlier this afternoon. Peters was able to craft playable reproductions of several famous Nintendo titles, including Super Mario 64 and the aforementioned The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, as well as generating some odd amalgamation of Metroid Prime 3 and Metroid Prime 4.
While it might not be immediately apparent in the videos that Peters provided, these Project Genie AI-generations are partially interactive, allowing users to move, jump, and, in the case of that Breath of the Wild one, even paraglide. For the time being, the worlds that it generates are limited to minute-long, 24fps, 720p showcases.
So, how is this legal? The short answer is that it isn’t, and Project Genie knows it isn’t.
At one point during his testing, Project Genie stopped Peters from making any further Super Mario 64 reproductions, out of concern for the “interests of third-party content providers.”
He also came dangerously close to generating a playable version of Kingdom Hearts. Project Genie generated an AI-generated mock-up featuring Donald Duck, Sora, Cloud, and Jack Skellington before the process was cut off at the world generation stage. I would have absolutely loved to have seen the resulting AI platform vs. AI platform legal battle that may have spawned out of that, considering Disney signed a $1 billion deal to license its characters to OpenAI’s genAI platform.