Google’s Genie generates worlds 🧞

Google DeepMind is scaling up what AI can see, understand, and build

Author

Lex Sokolin
April 22, 2025

Hi AI Futurists,

Google DeepMind just demonstrated Genie 2, a generative AI that can turn a single image into an interactive 3D world for training AI agents and robots. Combined with Astra’s real-world sensing, Google is edging toward AI systems that can learn from both simulation and reality. Let’s take a look.

Here’s our agenda.

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  • Google’s Genie generates worlds

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  • AI in the wild

  • Top news on the AI horizon

Best,
Lex

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How AI is Impacting the World

Google’s Genie generates worlds 🧞

Google DeepMind is scaling up what AI can see, understand, and build. In a new segment of 60 Minutes Overtime, Google showcased Genie 2, DeepMind's latest generative AI model capable of transforming static images into fully explorable 3D worlds. These simulated environments don’t just look cinematic—they're interactive spaces that AI agents (and eventually robots) can move through, reason in, and learn from. As DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis explained, “The Genie world model is creating the world around it on the fly.”

Alongside Genie 2, they also tested Project Astra, a multimodal AI assistant that interprets the real world through audio and video input. Astra identified artwork and spun up emotional narratives about the subjects, showcasing a kind of proto-creativity. DeepMind is building AI agents that imagine, generate, and act. And they're training these agents in photorealistic simulated worlds rather than in expensive, slow real-world labs. “You’d learn first in simulated worlds… and then fine-tune in the real world,” said Hassabis.

With tools like Genie 2, DeepMind is creating virtual testbeds that could revolutionize how machines learn. Hassabis hinted that existing geographic data—like Street View—could become interactive landscapes for agents to navigate. If AI can explore any image or location as a 3D environment, it changes what it means to “train” a model. The idea of world-building could shape how future agents learn to think, move, and act long before ever touching the physical world.

Watch the full conversation here.

Key Points

  • Genie 2 builds interactive environments from static images

  • These environments are used to train AI agents and potentially robots

  • Training in simulated worlds reduces cost and time

  • Astra can now interpret surroundings via audio-visual input

  • DeepMind may use Google’s geographic data (Maps, Street View) for world-building

  • Veo 2, DeepMind's video AI, now generates photorealistic, film-like clips from text prompts

What We Think About It

This is a major leap in embodied AI and simulation-based learning. Genie 2 unlocks real scalability for training agents without the physical-world friction. Using static images or geographic data as training environments will accelerate multimodal agent development faster than expected.

What You Can Do Right Now

Start paying closer attention to how AI is showing up in everyday tools—from voice assistants to smart glasses—because versions of Astra will likely become as common as smartphones. Explore AI-powered creativity apps like image generators or video tools (e.g. Runway, ChatGPT’s DALL·E, or Adobe Firefly) to get hands-on with how generative models are reshaping art, storytelling, and communication.

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