# Genie 4 builds worlds you can walk through, and now they have sound

URL: https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/blog/genie-4-builds-worlds-you-can-walk-through-and-now-they-have-sound
Published: 2026-10-29
Author: Roman Aglaganov, Full-stack developer
Category: Models
Region: Global
Tags: agents, deepfakes

> Google DeepMind’s Genie 4 generates interactive, photorealistic worlds in real time from a text prompt or an image, with ambient sound, music and characters who speak. It is a research preview for trusted testers, and every output carries a SynthID watermark.

![Illustration: a black perspective floor grid running to a horizon line, with grey sound-wave rings rising from one point and a small red figure standing in the middle](https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/api/media/file/genie-5.png)

Google DeepMind announced Genie 4 on 27 October. It is a “world model”: instead of making a fixed video, it generates a place you can move through in real time, using a keyboard to walk and look around, while the model works out what you should see and hear next.

## What is new

**Sound.** DeepMind says Genie 4 is its first real-time world model to generate audio natively. Each world has its own ambient sound, from wind in trees to waves on a beach, plus music and, most ambitiously, characters who talk and react to you as you go.

**Live steering.** You can change a simulation with ordinary language while it runs, for example changing the weather, moving the camera or adding a person or object, and Gemini adapts the request to fit the scene.

**Realism.** DeepMind says Genie 4 handles physics such as aerodynamics and collisions better, and that its biggest leap is in how people move and respond.

Behind the scenes, Genie 4 uses other Google models. Gemini Omni grounds what the world looks like, and Gemini 3.8 Flash acts as a guide: it watches the scene, breaks goals into steps and checks each step worked, so events follow on from each other.

## Why DeepMind is building it

DeepMind says simulating the world is a crucial part of building more general AI. One near-term use is training: robots and software agents can practise in endless, varied, safe simulations before they act in the real world, and DeepMind says it has been combining Genie 4 with its Gemini Robotics work. Companies are also testing it for quickly generating scenarios.

## Who can use it

For now, only trusted testers. DeepMind plans to open it next to Google AI Ultra subscribers through Project Genie and to early-access partners in the Gemini API and Google AI Studio, with a waitlist open. DeepMind says the model went through internal safety evaluations, and that all video and audio it generates will carry SynthID, Google’s invisible watermark for AI-made content. That matters: worlds this realistic, with people who speak, could also be used to make convincing fake footage.

## Sources

- [Google DeepMind: Genie 4, a new generation of world simulation](https://deepmind.google/blog/genie-4-a-new-generation-of-world-simulation/)
- [Google: We’re announcing Genie 4, our new world model for real-time interactive simulation](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-deepmind/introducing-genie-4/)