AI generates video game levels and characters from text prompts

Associate Professor Julian Togelius and computer science MS graduate Timothy Merino developed a simple generative AI tool to create video game maps, character models and emojis from a single-sentence prompt within milliseconds. The model shows what can be done with limited computing power, says Togelius. “A lot of people are aware of the potential for AI changing how games work,” he says. “But also, a lot of these things are just massive models that require massive amounts of data to train. This thing is trained on your home computer and runs on your phone, basically, in blazingly fast time."