Microsoft Is Testing A Version Of Minecraft That Lets You Play It Using AI - Report

Microsoft has reportedly produced a AI-driven demo of Minecraft that lets the user control the game by telling it what to do, rather than building everything themselves.

According to a report from Semafor, this demo lets players use AI to tell the game what to build, rather than the traditional gameplay format of moving their character around and building and digging themselves. The demo apparently uses cutting-edge AI, though not Prometheus, the tech that's used in the recently revealed Bing chat service that is developed with OpenAI.

The report notes that applying natural language commands to Minecraft is quite a difficult task, in particular because there are so many ways you could build any particular object. An AI might not build something like a car in the exact same way a person might, or it could use methods no one had thought of before.

Sources that spoke with Semafor did make the point that Microsoft doesn't plan to introduce this feature in the public version of the game in the near future, so if you're not very good at building, don't expect to suddenly be able to make the Eiffel Tower and barely lift a finger.

AI-generated content is quite a hot topic at the moment, made obvious by Microsoft announcing it was investing billions into the tech earlier this year, which it did after announcing 10,000 layoffs. OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT, a sort-of chat-bot that can theoretically produce music, books, code, and more. AI-generated art is quite controversial though, as it frequently trains on content made by a huge range of people and uses their work without permission.