A new program using AI image-generation technology to create a sort of playable version of Minecraft, once again prompting questions about the morality of AI.
What Is “AI Minecraft”?
AI has been in the public eye recently and AI related to Minecraft is no exception. Over the past few years, many people have demonstrated various AIs that can play the game. These have had varying success but the fact we’re now able to program visual learning algorithms that can learn from scratch how to play a game as complex as Minecraft is fascinating.
However, what if you use AI to generate the entire Minecraft experience completely? A new project called Oasis tries to do exactly that. Dubbed “AI Minecraft” by the community, the program, which you can try for yourself here, tries to create the game from the ground up using just AI-generated images.
It should be noted that this “Minecraft” isn’t that much of a game, but rather an interactive way to create Minecraft-like screenshots. While you can use the usual controls to interact with the game, every frame is created in real time using the software. There is no real in-game world, nor object permanence, so everything changes constantly based on your input. “Every step you take will shape the environment around you in real-time,” the devs have said about the project.
Here’s the official trailer of the game: https://x.com/DecartAI/status/1852091173420294291
The result is not so much a clone of Minecraft, but rather a very trippy recreation of the game based on images. Every time you turn around the scenery changes. The game often can’t render mobs and other complex features, often morphing sheep into wolves, into cows, and every weird blob of a being in between.
Despite these obvious setbacks and the very low playability and consistency of the “AI Minecraft” game, it’s still impressive when you think it’s essentially generating a game in real time using only AI. But what could this mean for normal Minecraft?
What Would This Mean For Minecraft?
While it’s a fascinating display of technological progress in the ever-evolving field of AI, it’s safe to say that the Oasis project has a long time to go before becoming a real alternative to Minecraft. The AI version is barely playable, there’s no object permanence, and items move on their own and morph into other ones when you enter the inventory.
However, as this video by popular Minecraft YouTuber PhoenixSC shows, it’s definitely an interesting and trippy, almost dream-like experience. The scenery changes every time you move your head 180 degrees and sometimes it does so even as you walk normally forward.
Perhaps with further development, Oasis could become a real contender to Minecraft, but it would take a long time and a lot more effort to do so. But imagine if the game has object permanence and more consistency in general. Imagine if the block you break and place in the world or items you create are actually remembered by the game.
On the one hand, this would play just like the real Minecraft. But on the other, it would mean a totally new way to procedurally generate terrain in games.
A Minecraft clone may be just the first stage of a new video game development. While there are many voxel-based sandbox games like Minecraft out there, few of them have super detailed graphics or high fidelity when it comes to the voxels. However, imagine combining the already quite realistic images that AI can generate with the ability to create a concise and realistic terrain.
Of course, sandbox games will not be the only genre of games that could benefit from such a potential technology. Imagine playing an RPG where you explore a procedurally-generated world that would be different during each playthrough.
What Are Some Concerns regarding AI Minecraft?
Needless to say, various media created using AI have improved quite a lot during the past few years, prompting many to question the ethical implications of such media. Many have criticized the fact that such programs, be they text, sound, or as in the case with Oasis, image-based, use already existing media to be created. After all, an AI needs huge amounts of existing data samples to be trained and many people see using works of art, music, or other media, without the explicit permission of the original creators, as a copyright infringement.
The case with AI Minecraft is no exception. While many have expressed amazement at the project’s ability to create relatively realistic sequences of gameplay in real-time, others have said this could be just the beginning of a new round of potential copyright infringements.
Will developers have to start adding explicit warnings to their games if they don’t want footage and gameplay to be used to train AIs? Could AI-generated games be seen as stealing from real games? Will there come a day when devs use AI in their games a lot more? Meanwhile, will other actors use AI to create bootleg copies of other titles?
The answer to all of these questions is probably yes. The thing is we still don’t know when these things will happen and what form they will take. Subsequently, we still don’t know how this would be regulated, if it is at all. So far it seems that many governments around the world have not yet found a concise way to regulate, say, the creation of AI images or deepfakes. Both of these technologies have been widely available to the public, and while most of the uses have not been nefarious, AI could also be used with ill intentions.
Conclusions
“AI Minecraft” has taken the internet by storm as many have flocked to see the Oasis project. And while the game is barely playable and it will be some time before it can perfectly emulate Minecraft, it’s still a fascinating showcase of the technology and how far image-generating AI has come over the years.
However, this has prompted many to question the morality of the technology, as it uses real Minecraft gameplay footage to generate the experience. Oasis could be just the first step in a new wave of using AI to create games in the future, which could be a double-edged sword.
While it may be a long time before Oasis reaches the playability of Minecraft, with the rapid development that AI has seen over the past few years, it may not take too long. The project has definitely sparked as much controversy, as fascination in the community and gaming in general.
If you’re interested in another recent Minecraft controversy related to copyright infringement, check the drama surrounding Skyblock, arguably the most famous Minecraft map ever.
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