Decartan Israeli AI company that emerged from stealth today with $21 million in funding from Sequoia and Oren Zeev has released what it claims is the primary playable “open-world” AI model.
The model, called Oasis, which is obtainable for download, relies on a demo on Decart's website: a Minecraft-like game that’s generated end-to-end on the fly. Oasis relies on videos of Minecraft gameplay, recording keyboard and mouse movements and generating frames in real time to simulate physics, rules and graphics.
Oasis is a component of an emerging category of generative AI models called “world models.” Many from this Models can simulate games – but few achieve frame rates as high as Oasis.
I attempted the demo out of curiosity and would say it still has an extended approach to go before it becomes a very enjoyable experience. The resolution is kind of low and Oasis tends to quickly “forget” the extent layout – I might turn my character around simply to see a rearranged landscape.
I'm also wondering what effects copyright law has here. Decart doesn't say it received Microsoft's blessing to coach on Minecraft footage. (Microsoft owns Minecraft.) Is Oasis essentially making an unauthorized copy of Minecraft? The courts have to make a decision that.
However, Decart believes that future versions of Oasis optimized to run on Etched's upcoming AI accelerator chips (the demo currently runs on Nvidia H100 GPUs) could generate as much as 4K gameplay.
“(These) models can augment even modern entertainment platforms by generating content on the fly in keeping with user preferences,” Decart writes in a blog post. “Or perhaps a gaming experience that gives latest possibilities for user interaction, resembling text and audio prompts that guide gameplay.”
