Following Google’s announcement of Project Genie, a new artificial intelligence tool that can create interactive virtual worlds from user commands, major companies in the video game industry experienced a challenging day on the stock market. According to reports, Google’s move sparked concern among investors, leading to notable declines in the stock values of major gaming firms.
AI Fears Hit Market: How Google Project Genie Caused a Sell-Off
As the markets closed on Friday, the impact was clear across the board. Take-Two Interactive shares fell by 7.93%, dropping to $220.30. The situation was more severe for Roblox, which saw its stock price decrease by 13.17% to $65.76. However, the hardest hit was Unity, which suffered a staggering 24.22% loss, with its stock price plummeting to $29.10.
This market reaction highlights existing anxieties surrounding AI tools, which are already under scrutiny for issues such as unauthorized use of artists’ work, copyright infringement, and high energy consumption. A report from Google DeepMind researchers mentioned that the initial Genie model was trained on over 200,000 hours of public gameplay videos. In contrast, Google officials state that the newer models are primarily developed using publicly available data from the web.
Current Limitations and Developer Concerns
Many game developers are worried that this technology could lead to the production of low-quality content by simply imitating existing games. While worlds created with Project Genie visually resemble games from Nintendo, they currently lack the original’s sense of fun and playability. Furthermore, with layoffs already affecting the industry, there is a concern that this tool could threaten jobs related to testing processes and concept creation.
The current version presented by Google can only produce 60-second interactive experiences. These demos do not include any scoring systems, mission objectives, or sound. They also exhibit inconsistencies, such as roads abruptly turning into grass. The generated content can only be downloaded as a video and cannot be imported into traditional game development engines like Unreal Engine or Unity.
Despite these technical limitations, interest from investors and executives in AI gaming tools continues to grow. Technology leaders such as Elon Musk, Tim Sweeney, and Mark Zuckerberg predict that artificial intelligence will make the gaming world more immersive and fundamentally change production processes.
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