Ben Poole

research scientist at google brain.

phd in neural nonsense from stanford.

[Ben Poole @poolio]

Real-world models are here! Stoked to share how we're bringing real-world locations to life by integrating Street View into Genie. Try it now at https://t.co/j6c1N38tRS and read the blog for more info:
https://t.co/6ZOi9d9rah

[Ben Poole @poolio]

@xxunhuang woohoo big congrats!!

[Ben Poole @poolio]

@yanpei_cao Awesome work, congrats to the team!

[Ben Poole @poolio]

A world model that updates and renders a dynamic world state. This is the way.

[Tripo @tripoai]

Introducing Project Eden, a world model research preview from @VASTAIResearch

Project Eden is a persistent, multiplayer world model that fundamentally breaks from existing paradigms by decoupling the underlying world state from visual rendering.

Instead of treating the world as a sequence of transient frames, Eden treats it as a structured, evolving environment that runs continuously, can be modified by user actions, and can be consistently observed from any viewpoint.

[Tripo @tripoai]

Introducing Project Eden, a world model research preview from @VASTAIResearch

Project Eden is a persistent, multiplayer world model that fundamentally breaks from existing paradigms by decoupling the underlying world state from visual rendering.

Instead of treating the world as a sequence of transient frames, Eden treats it as a structured, evolving environment that runs continuously, can be modified by user actions, and can be consistently observed from any viewpoint.

[Jon Barron @jon_barron]

Congrats @BenMildenhall and @_pratul_! ACM gives Grace Hopper Awards to under-35-year-olds for *one specific thing*, here it's NeRF.

Past winners include Donald Knuth (for "The Art of Computer Programming"), Steve Wozniak (for Apple), and @martin_casado (for SDN). Good company!

[Google AI @GoogleAI]

We wanted to see if we could take simple, physical materials (like cardboard and markers) and use AI to bring them to life. What was the result? A short film starring a bunch of TPUs getting ready for the big stage at Google I/O 2026!

Working with director Laurie Rowan and Nexus Studios, we kept human artistry at the center of the film by blending puppetry and 3D animation with our models to do the following ↓

Nano Banana: Generated beautifully stylized first frames from the raw puppet footage and basic 3D animations.

@GoogleAIStudio: Built a custom tool inside the platform to test these frames at scale, ensuring pixel-perfect consistency

Gemini Omni & experimental @GoogleDeepMind Models: Merged the base animation and stylized frames to elevate the final piece to a cinematic level.

Our AI pipelines were specifically designed to protect the crafty details that give these films their heart, like the tiny human imperfections of puppetry, or the nuance an animator can build into an expression.

[Google DeepMind @GoogleDeepMind]

Project Genie 🤝 @GoogleMaps Street View

You can now take real U.S. places and transform them into new, interactive worlds. 🌍

[Miriam Daniel @miriamkdaniel]

Imagine driving down one of the most picturesque highways on the Pacific Coast (Highway 1) in a race car… now I can use Project Genie, connected with Street View, to bring that to life in vivid detail!

At #GoogleIO, we announced that we’re bringing Google Street View into Project Genie, so you can create and explore imaginative, interactive worlds anchored in real places.

Available to eligible Google AI Ultra Subscribers globally.

Great collab from @jmbherbert, @jparkerholder, @poolio, @drivascos + many others from @GoogleDeepMind and @GoogleLabs.

[Bilawal Sidhu @bilawalsidhu]

Google just turned Street View into a video game.

The mother lode of ground level data -- 280 billion real world panoramas, now playable in real time.

Here's everything you need to know in 7 mins:

00:00 Genie 3 Grounded In Reality
00:44 Real-time Demos!
03:48 The Bigger Picture
05:36 Current Limitations
06:54 World Model Resources

[Ben Poole @poolio]

Project Genie is now available to all Google AI Ultra subscribers globally! Take it for a spin and try real worlds grounded in Street View or imagined worlds with ungrounded cats:
https://t.co/YX01wPC1p5

[Google Labs @GoogleLabs]

We love seeing all of the worlds you’ve been creating with Genie.

SO much so, that we’re excited to announce Project Genie is now fully available to all Google AI Ultra subscribers globally (18+).

[Linyi Jin @jin_linyi]

Excited to share what we are building -- Genie experience grounded in real-world street view. Try it out at https://t.co/4PnR4DNtbW

[Ben Poole @poolio]

@mttrdmnd thx 🙏

[Google Labs @GoogleLabs]

Have you explored Project Genie yet? 🌎 We just launched a huge set of updates! You can now simulate worlds grounded in @GoogleMaps Street View, manage your creations in a new library, and share them externally. Let's dive in:

1️⃣ Street View Grounding: You can now generate worlds starting from real places! Just tap the Maps pin to choose a location in the US and you can pick a style like "Desert Sands" or "Ocean World." Describe your character, and Genie ties your starting location to real-world imagery.

2️⃣ Library: You can now store and organize your generated worlds. Easily explore past creations or remix your favorites to iterate on your ideas.

3️⃣ External sharing: You can now share your generated worlds. Anyone can watch a video preview of your world, and Ultra subscribers can explore or remix them. Check out a shared world here: https://t.co/kmqi5t6yTW

✨ And now, Project Genie is gradually rolling out to all eligible Google AI Ultra subscribers globally (18+). Jump in and start creating today!

[MBZ @babaeizadeh]

The likeness preservation and natural realism coming out of Gemini #Omni Flash is absolutely unreal 🤯

Huge shoutout to the insanely talented team for pushing these boundaries. The team absolutely cooked. 👨‍🍳🔥

If Flash is this good... imagine what Pro is about to unleash. 👀✨

[Justine Moore @venturetwins]

I got to "play" a world model in real life.

The @GoogleDeepMind folks set up a crazy demo for Genie.

You select glowing orbs to represent your scene and character. It loads the world in the model, and you navigate with joysticks like a video game 🕹️

[Google @Google]

Project Genie is a @GoogleLabs experiment that lets you simulate dynamic worlds you can navigate in real time with Genie, our general-purpose world model.

Today, we’re connecting Project Genie to nearly 20 years of Street View data from Google Maps — so you can now build interactive spaces based on real-world locations.

Street View imagery in Project Genie is available now for places in the U.S., and will expand to more locales over time.

#GoogleIO

[Ben Poole @poolio]

checking out I/O

[Ben Poole @poolio]

@S_alim94 @REVOLVO_OCELOTS check the blog, we are expanded outside the US today too!

[Ben Poole @poolio]

Real-world models are here! Stoked to share how we're bringing real-world locations to life by integrating Street View into Genie. Try it now at https://t.co/j6c1N38tRS and read the blog for more info:
https://t.co/6ZOi9d9rah

[Rebecca Bellan @RebeccaBellan]

Google’s Genie world model can now simulate real streets with Street View https://t.co/omZfvUn3ZB via @techcrunch