As the race to render every artistic creation into a AI-based equivalent of the grey slop-filled Krabby Patty alternative from SpongeBob continues, we're starting to see serious, real-world consequences from AI-based experiments. Recently, it appears Project Genie - Google's AI experiment which can create limited three-dimensional environments that can be explored like a game - has made quite the impression on a lot of company investors.
Specifically, as caught by Wccftech, multiple huge gaming companies have seen their share prices plummet thanks to a selling panic caused by Project Genie. Unity Technologies, the maker of the Unity Engine, saw an 18.8% drop. Take-Two Interactive lost ~10%, CD Projekt Red fell by 8%, even the titanic Roblox had a fall, dropping by 13%.
Capcom, Tencent, and other companies that make up some of Asia's biggest game creators were mostly unaffected, showing that perhaps this panic is more of a Western trend. It definitely feels like a lot of Twitter/X users have drank the Kool-Aid of this being the end of traditional gaming developers, but there's at least 30 AI-ridden slop posts telling me Hollywood is dead on my algorithm each day, so I'll believe it when I see it.
Project Genie is currently an early stage concept, and while it can generate 3D environments from prompts alone, we'll have to see if it can actually make something worth playing as it continues to grow and develop.
