World Labs launches Marble, a commercial world model for generating entire virtual environments – News

World Labs Technologies, a company founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li and focused on developing breakthrough artificial intelligence models, today announced the launch of its first commercial world model product: Marble.

Marble lets users generate entire virtual worlds from text prompts, photos, panoramas or 3D models and download fully editable 3D environments.

World Labs initially debuted the world model in limited beta mode two months ago. In the preview, the company showed that the model can generate 3D worlds that users can then explore as long as they want, with no morphing and no inconsistency. According to the company, Marble represents a leap over previous models by producing larger, more stylistically diverse world with cleaner 3D geometry.

World models are useful because they allow AI models connected to the real world to understand and predict the world’s behavior. This is critical for developing more capable AI systems, such as autonomous vehicles and robots, by producing realistic training data.

Marble’s world models can also be used for entertainment, such as generating entire, complex worlds for cinema and video games. Many video games, for example, use virtual worlds for players to participate in that rely on 3D editing tools to recreate realistic or semi-realistic environments for users to play the game.

Marble can generate worlds in a broad variety of styles, including cartoon, science fiction, futuristic, fantasy, anime, realistic and retro-styled low poly-count (where the objects and walls appear to be a “low graphics” as if rendered on an older computer).

Li is well known for creating ImageNet in 2009, a landmark AI dataset that revolutionized the field of computer vision. ImageNet contains over 14 million images organized according to a hierarchy of English nouns and their relationships. Its creation transformed computer vision from a niche research pursuit into one of the most dynamic fields of AI and laid the groundwork for visual reasoning and, ultimately, for today’s generative world models.

World models and visual reasoning form the basis for spatial intelligence, Li said, a concept that will transform how users create and interact with real and virtual environments.

“Today, leading AI technology such as large language models have begun to transform how we access and work with abstract knowledge,” Li explained in a blog post. “Yet they remain wordsmiths in the dark; eloquent but inexperienced, knowledgeable but ungrounded.”

Building spatially intelligent AI, Li argued, requires creating world models that are generative and capable of understanding, reasoning, and producing the semantic context of not only objects but also their relationships. This mandates creating and reasoning in dynamic, complex worlds, real or virtual, beyond the current capabilities of modern LLMs.

The current market contains several contenders working on world models, including Google LLC’s Genie, Nvidia Corp.’s Cosmos and AI startup Decart AI Inc. Unlike many world foundation models in the industry currently, including World Labs’ own Real-Time Frame Model, Marble allows users to generate persistent worlds and download them as 3D models rather than producing them on the fly.

Like AI image editors, Marble also offers tools for users to modify virtual worlds. Chisel, an experimental 3D editor, allows users to define virtual spaces with layouts such as walls, rooms and terrain and then use a text prompt to refine how the rough “sketch” should be used.

Another feature allows users to expand the world by extending already available portions or take pieces of the world and then bridge them together seamlessly. The model expands the world by generating more of the 3D space based on existing rules and style. Users who want to build extremely large spaces can combine already generated worlds with a “composer mode,” allowing them to stitch together different styles.

Marble is available in four pricing tiers: Free, with four virtual world generations from text, images or panoramas; Standard at $20 per month with 12 generations, multimedia support and extended editing; Pro at $35 per month with 25 generations and commercial rights; and Max at $95 per month with 75 generations and a full feature set.

Image: World Labs