Access to Project Genie will cost you $124.99 a month
By Ali Shutler 30th January 2026
'The Legend of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom' Credit: Nintendo
Google has started letting people try out its new AI tool, with rip-offs of The Legend Of Zelda, Mario and Grand Theft Auto already appearing online.
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Project Genie is an interactive world creation tool that uses Google’s Genie 3 engine. After entering a prompt, players are able to explore a playable 3D space. They can travel around the AI-generated world by running, swimming, flying or using vehicles.
AdvertisementCurrently, Project Genie is only available to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US who are aged 18 or older. A subscription costs $124.99 a month and the AI-generated experiences only last for 60 seconds.
One clip shared on social media shows a brief video of a Project Genie experience that looks an awful lot like Grand Theft Auto while another seems to take heavy inspiration from The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild.
There is no map pre-loaded in memory. As your agent explores, Genie predicts and renders the path ahead instantly. Infinite exploration. pic.twitter.com/5lZzhFS6vo
— sammy (@sumiturkude007) January 30, 2026
A report from The Verge showed a number of Nintendo “knock offs” created with Google’s Project Genie, including AI takes on Super Mario 64 and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond but they were blocked from creating something inspired by Kingdom Hearts. They were later stopped from using Mario as a prompt due to “interests of third-party content providers.”
“Project Genie is an experimental research prototype designed to follow prompts a user provides. As with all experiments, we are monitoring closely and listening to user feedback,” said product manager Diego Rivas when asked about using copyright material. Project Genie has been trained “primarily on publicly available data from the web.”
RecommendedI played GTA VI (sort of)
Using just a couple of screenshots, I explored the game world using the new Genie 3 model from Google.
Absolutely insane technology! pic.twitter.com/DUMN7owhmn
— Alex Patrascu (@maxescu) January 30, 2026
“While they made me laugh, the worlds don’t have scores or anything to strive for, so there’s nothing to do but walk or jump around. Even if there were specific things to do, the input lag made the worlds basically unplayable,” wrote The Verge in their review of Project Genie.
Earlier this year, Elon Musk and Fortnite boss Tim Sweeney said they believed AI would be able to make a playable version of Grand Theft Auto 6 before developers Rockstar are able to release the game this November.
AdvertisementLast year, Nintendo promised to take “necessary action” over AI copyright infringement after a number of spoof videos were created using Sora. However, the company confirmed they had not asked the government to get involved.
In other news, Roblox viral minigame Steal A Brainrot is reportedly being turned into a Hollywood blockbuster.
