What is Google’s Project Genie?

00:00 Josh

Well, Google turning heads in the video game world with the launch of Project Genie and rattling some major gaming stocks in the process. Joining me now, we got Yahoo Finance Tech editor, Dan Howley. Dan.

00:13 Dan

Yeah, Josh, this is uh basically a research kind of model that Google is showing off. uh Project Genie, you’ll be able to essentially create, we’ll say game-like worlds, uh using generative AI. So you type in a prompt and you’ll be able to say, you know, I don’t know, I’m just watching some of the screens here.

00:32 Dan

Make a a a parrot fly through the rainforest or have, uh one example is a cat riding a Roomba around your house. and so you then you’d be able to just kind of control these things. Very basic controls, you know, AWS, space bar, forward back, left, right. Uh but the promise here, you can also take a picture of something like if, you know, I want to have my phone bounce around and do something. I could take a picture of my phone, upload it and then have it bounce around the center in here. The prompt the promise here being that, you know, you would be able to create games on the fly.

01:03 Dan

And it really did spook investors in some of these gaming stocks. You know, obviously, Unity uh is down. uh that was uh 24% uh at one point Roblox down, uh CD Project also down, Electronic Arts down, Take 2 down. and it’s not necessarily just because of Unity. It’s, you know, there was obviously earnings built sorry, uh uh Genie, there were some earnings built into there, but that has been a catalyst for the overall gaming market and the question has been for quite some time, you know, where does AI fit into gaming?

01:41 Dan

Some companies are using it for, you know, prepping for for early kind of concept. That makes sense. you know, you want to storyboard, you’re going to say, okay, how do I want to do this? You’d still need storyboard board artists uh to actually, you know, give you more, you know, different iterations, but it it is something that you you look at and you say, is this going to replace gaming? I do not think so.

02:01 Josh

So if I if I’m an investor, Dan, I’m trying to figure out, okay, with Genie, how disruptive this is going to be to the industry, the video game industry. I I I have to kind of break it down maybe. Like I have to say, okay, well, is it going to be different for developers versus publishers versus versus game engines?

02:15 Dan

Yeah, I think that it all the above marketing, right? Like every part of of gaming could be touched by this.

02:22 Dan

There’s two one thing is, you know, I I these technologies are still very new. I I at this point, you can’t look at it and say, all right, I better pack my bags and, you know, find a new job. It it’s just not there, right? I mean, there’s going to be errors, there’s going to be issues.

02:37 Dan

The other thing about gaming is, you know, you you need it to be repeatable. It’s something where, you know, all right, cool, I just beat this game. I’m going to go play it again. I have to see exactly the same thing, exactly where it was. It has to look exactly the same. You’re not going to get that with something like this. Maybe, I don’t know, years down the line, but at this point, that ain’t it. That’s not the hotness, right?

02:54 Dan

The other thing is, and I say this all the time as a gamer, gamers are jerks, right? So, if you throw something out there and you say, okay, this is made with, you know, Gen AI, there’s going to be a huge stink. rightfully so, wrongfully so, whatever, but there’s always a strong reaction, right? And so, you know, uh one of the biggest games uh of the uh last year, uh Exhibition 33, they uh had one of their game awards for the indie games uh taken away because they used generative AI in early concepts. They had said they didn’t. It was a big controversy.

03:20 Dan

Uh regardless, the game is still awesome and people still loved it. Now, there’s been other things where there’s been uh some ads that clearly use generative AI or loading screens for different games that use generative AI and people just kind of smoked them online, right? Does that mean people stop playing? Not really, but I do think that the backlash could be strong enough where it could impact sales. And because as I said, gamers are we’ll say fickle, fickle jerks. Uh that could really impact overall sales.

03:42 Josh

quickly, Dan, as a gamer, when you see these new AI tools, what’s the risk if at all that okay, you think maybe a lot of games actually start all kind of looking the same.

03:51 Dan

That’s the thing, right? Like, okay, so you have a shooter game. Okay, you’re always in that one perspective. You have like a, you know, a a puzzle game, okay, it’s it’s in perspective, but all these games come from individual or groups of people putting together what they want to see and and their ideas. So, you know, sure you could type that out, but you’re not going to get the the kind of granular look and feel that you want out of a game by typing it into a prompt, right? Like, I’m not going to get Zelda, the way I want Zelda, right? I’m not going to have that feeling of exploration.

04:22 Dan

I’m not going to have that kind of, you know, joy that you get when you, you know, fire up Mario or Mario, whatever. Uh, you know, if I’m going to go back and play an old school game where I want to play, you know, a recreation of an old school game like uh, you know, Crash or something, you’re not going to get that with generative AI. So I I I just don’t think that this is going to demolish the industry like some investors think.