World Models news

Google’s Genie 4 builds worlds with sound you can steer

Google DeepMind’s new world model makes interactive scenes with sound and speech, and users can change them by typing. For now only trusted testers can use it, and nobody outside Google has tested its claims.

Google DeepMind released Genie 4 as a research preview for trusted testers on October 27. The model creates a world that people can move through, drawn frame by frame as they go, and change with text prompts. Google says Google AI Ultra subscribers and some developers will get it soon, but has given no date or price.

AMD will buy Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2 billion

The all-stock deal brings a maker of 3D world models into the chip company. Li becomes AMD’s chief scientist, reporting to CEO Lisa Su.

AMD has agreed to buy World Labs, the AI lab founded by Fei-Fei Li, in an all-stock deal valued at about $8.2 billion, the companies said on September 28. World Labs builds models that generate and simulate interactive 3D environments. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.

Image AI maker Black Forest Labs released a robot model

It tops NVIDIA’s RoboLab-120 simulation leaderboard.

Black Forest Labs released FLUX 3 Action, a 7-billion-parameter model that turns camera images and text instructions into robot movements. It leads NVIDIA’s RoboLab-120 leaderboard with 42.9%. The weights are free for non-commercial use, and most speed and real-robot figures come from the company.

Robots are learning how to handle mistakes in the real world

New robot models are moving from clean labs into busy places such as warehouses and kitchens. They are getting better at noticing problems and trying again.