Microsoft Used AI to Recreate Quake II

On April 4, Microsoft unveiled an interactive gameplay demo in Copilot Labs. It is an AI rendition of Quake II powered by Muse, its generative AI model for video game visuals.

Quake II is a first-person shooter (FPS) game published in 1997 by Activision Blizzard, which is now owned by Microsoft.

To make this possible, Microsoft introduced a real-time playable extension of their previous model, i.e, World and Human Action MaskGIT Model (WHAMM). 

The process involved training WHAMM on approximately one week of curated gameplay data from Quake II, a significant reduction from the seven years of data used for its older model to generate similar results. This focused data collection, aided by professional game testers, allowed for training on a single level with intentional gameplay. 

The blog post explained the experience in brief, saying, “Much to our initial delight, we were able to play inside the world that the model was simulating. We could wander around, move the camera, jump, crouch, shoot, and even blow-up barrels similar to the original game.” It added, “Additionally, since it features in our data, we can also discover some of the secrets hidden in this level of Quake II.”