For better or worse, AI is making its way into everything related to tech. Now, Microsoft has announced Muse, a generative AI model for gameplay and its model weights, sample data, and interactive interface are all available on Azure AI Foundry. The company believes generative AI can boost creativity for developers, opening up new possibilities to bring more games to more people around the world. This generative AI breakthrough has been published in the journal Nature, and it was announced by Microsoft Research.
Muse was created in partnership with Ninja Theory, and is a world and human action model (WHAM) trained on Ninja Theory’s multiplayer battle arena game, Bleeding Edge. What makes it groundbreaking is that Muse has a detailed understanding of the 3D game world, including game physics and how games respond to players’ controller actions. As a result, the model is able to create consistent and diverse gameplay rendered by AI. Another example Microsoft gave for its application is the ability to make older games accessible to future generations across new devices in new ways.
Initially, the team at Microsoft Research wanted to explore how generative AI models could support new experiences by focusing on developing AI capabilities that could help game developers ideate and expand their work in new ways. They went on to interview 27 global game creators from indie and AAA studios to make sure the research it was conducting was shaped by the people who would eventually use it.
Although Microsoft admits it’s still early, the model research is already pushing the boundaries of what they originally thought was possible. The team is already using Muse to develop a real-time, playable AI model that has been trained on other first-party games, and they are already seeing the potential for it to one day benefit both players and game creators. It’s also working to explore the potential for Muse to take older back-catalog games from Microsoft’s studios and optimize them for any device. Another concept is to see how Muse could help game teams prototype new gameplay experiences during the creative process.
It’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft Muse impacts the gaming industry. The company iterated that for Xbox, game creators will always be at the center of its overall AI efforts, and it has empowered creative leaders at Xbox to decide on the use of generative AI. Hopefully, it’s not just more tech that can be used to justify layoffs at Xbox Studios.
