this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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The tech demo is part of Microsoft’s Copilot for Gaming push, and features an AI-generated replica of Quake II that is playable in a browser. The Quake II level is very basic and includes blurry enemies and interactions, and Microsoft is limiting the amount of time you can even play this tech demo.

“You could imagine a world where from gameplay data and video that a model could learn old games and really make them portable to any platform where these models could run,” said Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer in February. “We’ve talked about game preservation as an activity for us, and these models and their ability to learn completely how a game plays without the necessity of the original engine running on the original hardware opens up a ton of opportunity.”

I have no idea what an AI generated version of quake has to do with game "preservation" when there are so many better ways to improve old games accessibility. But hey, at least we can burn more forest while playing AI Quake!!

You can try this AI Quake for yourself: https://copilot.microsoft.com/wham

Its very laggy for me but maybe someone with faster computer can make it work? Anyway I am not sure if people think its worth it.

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[–] shirro@aussie.zone 12 points 22 hours ago

Using infinite energy to employ infinite monkeys to recreate the work of one Elizabethan playwright is not a business plan.

Stop using windows, office and azure and this company and their bullshit go away.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ah we've reached that step in the Microsoft hype cycle then. Remember when HoloLens showed running Minecraft on a table? This is the stage I believe where Microsoft is running out of ideas and desperately trying to get the consumer to care.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Whatever happened to the hololens? I used an early one and it was genuinely an incredibly cool bit of kit. Could they just not think of a way to make money with it?

Yup, had a bunch of future tech examples of it like doctors performing surgeries from around the world and building virtual designer shops, but couldn't figure out a modern day use for it. So flopped.

[–] termus@beehaw.org 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The amount of energy it must take to generate a shitty version of Quake II. Yeesh.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

While I agree with you and while I am not the biggest generative Ai fan, we have to admit this is still in early phase and is just a proof of concept what the technology is capable of. The version of this game might not be as good as the original (and that's only mildly said), that this is possible like this with artificial intelligence tools is impressive.

Its like teaching an ape to program Quake 2. Even if its a shitty version of it, it would be ground breaking.

[–] termus@beehaw.org 2 points 2 hours ago

People don't even look at AI generated photos for more than a second. "Oh neat, next." SO much wasted electricity for instant garbage. One decent AI image has probably a 100+ shitty ones that are just wasting GPUs and hard drive space. When those drives are full and old they dump them and then fill up some more. A mountain of invisible shit wasting our resources.

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 1 day ago

they limit the amount of time because it quickly goes to shit after a while, probably

[–] tocano@lemmy.today 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Look, I understand AI, in general, not just LLM, is very powerful and research is needed to develop better models. However, people and media need to stop presenting every random research project as the NEW BIG THING, as that will just make non-technical people confused and lead to unnecessary hysteria.

Stop hammering not-nails with not-hammers.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's the Copy-Paste media of today for you. Ironically its probably analyzed, write supported or maybe even completely written by Ai itself.

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 3 points 22 hours ago

A friend who is (was?) a writer told me that it's tremendously difficult to find work nowadays as a writer, and so much of what is available is just proof reading and copy editing AI slop. Apparently it's pretty soul sucking, especially when they're basically forbidden from doing any significant rewrites or error checking, and they're expecting to be grateful for the opportunity

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 29 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Saw a video on this earlier and it really makes me think we're absolutely nowhere near an AI being able to generate a full-on or even a partially playable video game in real time any time soon, much to the dismay of the tech/AI bros.

Also, they talk about making old games portable as though you can't just boot up a game like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger on an emulator like PCSX2 or Dolphin on a device like a Steam Deck anything similar, all without needing powerful enough systems to run a whole extremely in depth simulation of our universe.

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 16 points 1 day ago

Using this technology for preservation sake is just absurd.

[–] 30p87@feddit.org 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Reminder that old games, ported correctly, run on anything. We just need the source.

[–] vegetvs@kbin.earth 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not even that, you just need to emulate the original platform.

[–] FippleStone@aussie.zone 7 points 1 day ago

I feel like there's an interesting discussion to be had around source ports v emulation

[–] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 22 points 1 day ago

'Created' is a strong word.

[–] Ideonek@lemm.ee 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Do you remember when writers strike, and the producents paid to cut leafs of trees, to denny them comfort of marching in shadow? It seems there is no limit of how much corporations are willing to pay to get rid of the inconveniences of dealing with human beings.

It seems that AI is amazing tool, that is bound to be used to make everything worse.

[–] sculd@beehaw.org 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's what I don't understand about the "executives". They seem to hate the idea of paying people when they might actually save more money by treating employees well.

[–] Ideonek@lemm.ee 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Oh, that's simple. They are idiots that don't understand the product they sell.

Imagine that you are a best in the word graphic designer. And you have to sell your logo to someone, who literally don't see the difference between quality work and the logo that their nice did in ms paint.

In their mind those are the same picture, so why should they invest in you while you are 300x more expensive?

The don't see it, so their use data - that they also don't understand - to look for X factors and came up with idiotic conclusions like "star trek movies with older first captains perform better than movies with younger first capitan, so good script should have old one" or "movies with 3 joks per 5-minutes performe better than movies with one joke per 5 minutes"... or "jar-jar bings"...

When future comic book author of the masterpiece Bone finaly got his 5-minute meeting with publisher who was basicly a godfather-legend-who-is-who off paperstrips he heard "you should redraw all your comics so all speech-bubbles are thought-bubbles. Why? Garfield uses thought-bubbles, and it's so successful".

Soulcrushing.

It's the same reason why all all translations are shit now. People who decide are not literate enough to distinguish nuances of top-level translations from product of Google translate.

You're thinking additional 30k to make sure that a script is good is rounding error in the cost of the movie. They are thinking, typing one page should take like 10-minuts right? So with $15/h...."

Remember, for them LOTR and Hobbit are "just as good" source materials for epic blockbuster trilogy.

They are literally quality-blind. Cost-cutting is all they bring to the table.

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Maybe they can sell their AI Slop to AI slop? Really cut people right out of the equation.

[–] haverholm@kbin.earth 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

![Two panel comic by Tom Fishburne. In the left hand panel a man sitting at a desk gestures at his computer screen saying "AI turns this single bullet point into a long email I can pretend I wrote".

In the right hand panel, a woman at a desk gestures at her computer screen, saying "AI makes a single bullet point out of this long email I can pretend I read".](https://media.kbin.earth/0e/cd/0ecd0684ffcca4418a8c72039a75b0f4b67004d4c71ae134821e2d766f99a779.jpg)

[–] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

the line break in your alt text breaks the formatting.

[–] haverholm@kbin.earth 6 points 1 day ago

Oh? 🤦 I'm sorry, I don't see the error in Mbin (mobile browser view). Please let me know how I can fix it for other platforms.

[–] Ideonek@lemm.ee 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You're describing my Facebook wall.

[–] Lodespawn@aussie.zone 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think that's just Facebook, surely no people actually use it any more?

[–] vegetvs@kbin.earth 5 points 1 day ago

Unfortunately not true. Some people still think Facebook is the Internet.