Today Microsoft Research revealed “Muse” or what it defines as a “Generative AI model for gameplay.”
The announcement was made on Xbox’s news outlet Xbox Wire and on Microsoft Research’s own blog (with more details) alongside a publication on Nature (apparently some people have lost sight of what “nature” means).
Muse is a “world and human action model” (WHAM) trained with the complicity of Ninja Theory, which provided its flopped 2020 multiplayer battle arena game Bleeding Edge for the purpose.
The news was accompanied by a video featuring Xbox boss Phil Spencer, Ninja Theory Studio Head Dom Matthews, and Senior Principal Research Manager Katja Hofmann.
You can watch it below and cringe as much as you feel is necessary. Likely a lot.
According to Microsoft, Muse can “create consistent and diverse gameplay rendered by AI, demonstrating a major step toward generative AI models that can empower game creators.”
The company believes that it’s “groundbreaking” because of its “detailed understanding of the 3D game world, including game physics and how the game reacts to players’ controller actions.”
The declared goal is to “support new experiences, focusing on developing AI capabilities that could allow game developers to ideate and expand upon their work in new ways.”
The researcher interviewed 27 game creators ranging from indies to AAA-scale to set the stage for the project, and the model, data, and interface is now available on Azure AI foundry for people to fiddle with.
Now Microsoft is using Muse to develop a real-time playable AI model trained on other first-party games and believes that this work will one day “benefit both players and game creators” (yeah, sure).
This should (according to Microsoft) enable faster creative ideation and even bring back nostalgic games by letting the AI examine footage and gameplay and automatically port the game to modern platforms.
“We believe this could radically change how we preserve and experience classic games in the future and make them accessible to more players.”
The company plans to release “short interactive AI game experiences” on Copilot Labs “very soon.”
Perhaps the most newsworthy (and concerning) thing about all this is that Microsoft has “empowered creative leaders at Xbox to decide on the use of generative AI.”
While Microsoft continues to wave around its “Responsible AI” catchphrase, it’s impossible to hide the fact that behind all the jargon, there is a massive risk of making thousands of human development roles redundant.
By having classic games ported automatically, you obviously remove the need for human developers to do the porting work. Matthews himself mentioned that what he’s interested in is helping teams to “do more,” conveniently omitting the fact that teams that can “do more” don’t need to hire people to increase their output.
This is all particularly tone-deaf as the industry continues to bleed talent with layoffs and studio closures announced almost daily. The very name “muse” is frankly an insult to the creativity of real game developers, as the only relevant inspiration comes from within the human mind, not from bots trained like monkeys on failed games.
