Google DeepMind's Genie 4: a video you can walk into

Genie 4 turns a text or image prompt into an interactive world you can move through and change with plain-language instructions in real time, now with native audio and longer sessions of a few minutes (TechCrunch reports up to two minutes, against one for Genie 3). It's built with Gemini Omni and Gemini 3.8 Flash, and Google also showed a robotics experiment with Gemini 4 Argon. It's a research preview for trusted testers for now, coming to Google AI Ultra subscribers in Project Genie and to early-access partners in the Gemini API and AI Studio, and Google lists its own limitations. The 'looks like real camera footage' reactions are creator enthusiasm, not a test.

Why it mattersEarly uses are training scenarios, product walk-throughs and pitch demos you can explore instead of just watch. Most people can't try it yet, so note it and wait for API access before planning anything.

How we knowCompany figures are labelled as their own claims; anything we couldn't verify is labelled as a report or a claim.