Recreating Real-World Places with Project Genie and Street View
We are currently combining Project Genie with nearly 20 years of Google Street View imagery to make it possible to create new worlds grounded in reality.
Researchers at Google DeepMind and Google Research are exploring new ways for AI to simulate the real world, working toward the ability to generate high-fidelity 3D environments in unprecedented ways.
Project Genie is a DeepMind research project that can generate an explorable 3D world from a single image, allowing you to walk around, look at objects, and interact with the environment. We are now combining it with nearly 20 years of Google Street View imagery to help create imaginative new worlds based on real places.
From the Real World to Interactive Worlds
Street View panoramic imagery covers millions of miles of roads and places around the world, capturing rich details of the Earth’s surface. By combining this data with Project Genie, we can transform real-world locations such as streets, neighborhoods, and landmarks into interactive virtual environments.
This capability opens up new possibilities for games, simulation training, educational experiences, and digital content creation. Developers can draw inspiration from real spaces and expand them into entirely new scenes.
Research and Future Directions
This research demonstrates the potential of generative AI in spatial understanding and world models. By combining visual data from the real world with models of generable environments, we are moving toward virtual worlds that are more coherent, easier to explore, and more lifelike.
Although this project is still in the research stage, it points to an important direction for future immersive experiences: not only generating imagined worlds, but also building digital spaces grounded in real places and strongly connected to the real world.