In nearly every corner of our lives, the buzz about AI is impossible to ignore. It’s destined to revolutionize how we work, learn, and play. For those of us immersed in the world of gaming—whether as players or creators—the question isn’t just how AI will change the game, but how it will ignite new possibilities.

At Xbox, we’re all about using AI to make things better (and more fun!) for players and game creators. We want to bring more games to more people around the world and always stay true to the creative vision and artistry of game developers. We believe generative AI can boost this creativity and open up new possibilities.

We’re excited to announce a generative AI breakthrough, published today in the journal Nature and announced by Microsoft Research, that shows this potential to open up new possibilities— including the opportunity to make older games accessible to future generations of players across new devices and in new ways.

Introducing Muse, a Generative AI Model for Gameplay Ideation   

In partnership with Xbox Game Studios’ Ninja Theory, Microsoft Research developed a world and human action model (WHAM) named Muse: a first of its kind generative AI model trained on Ninja Theory’s multiplayer battle arena game, Bleeding Edge. Ninja Theory and Microsoft Research are both based in Cambridge, which made collaboration easy and led to the use of Bleeding Edge for this research.

What’s groundbreaking about Muse is its detailed understanding of the 3D game world, including game physics and how the game reacts to players’ controller actions. This allows the model to create consistent and diverse gameplay rendered by AI, demonstrating a major step toward generative AI models that can empower game creators.

Microsoft Research initially set out to explore how generative AI models can support new experiences, focusing on developing AI capabilities that could allow game developers to ideate and expand upon their work in new ways. To accomplish that, they interviewed 27 global game creators—from indies to AAA game studios—to make sure the research was shaped by the people who would use it. To allow other research teams and game developers to explore the model and experiment with its capabilities, Muse, its model weights, sample data, and interactive interface are now all available on Azure AI Foundry.

What Muse Means for Gaming

Although it’s still early, this model research is pushing the boundaries of what we thought was possible. We are already using Muse to develop a real-time playable AI model trained on other first-party games, and we see potential for this work to one day benefit both players and game creators: from allowing us to revive nostalgic games to faster creative ideation.

Today, countless classic games tied to aging hardware are no longer playable by most people. Thanks to this breakthrough, we are exploring the potential for Muse to take older back catalog games from our studios and optimize them for any device. We believe this could radically change how we preserve and experience classic games in the future and make them accessible to more players.

To imagine that beloved games lost to time and hardware advancement could one day be played on any screen with Xbox is an exciting possibility for us. Another opportunity we are exploring is how Muse can help game teams prototype new gameplay experiences during the creative process and introduce new content—taking games players already love and enabling our developers to inject new experiences for them to enjoy, or even enable you to participate in the creation process.

We’ll create opportunities for people to participate in this exploration, starting with short interactive AI game experiences for you to try on Copilot Labs very soon. There’s still so much for us to discover, and we can’t wait to share more.

Xbox’s Approach to Generative AI

Xbox has been innovating with AI and machine learning for decades, including in partnership with Microsoft Research—constantly working to find ways to delight players, and harness new computing capabilities to bring creative visions to life. While AI isn’t new to gaming, we’re now seeing an acceleration of generative AI research, both within Microsoft and across the broader technology community. We believe it’s important to shape how these new generative AI breakthroughs can support our industry and game creation community in a collaborative and responsible way.

For Xbox, game creators will always be the center of our overall AI efforts. We believe there is space for traditional game development and future generative AI technologies that serve as an extension of creative work and offer novel experiences. As part of this, we have empowered creative leaders here at Xbox to decide on the use of generative AI. There isn’t going to be a single solution for every game or project, and the approach will be based on the creative vision and goals of each team.

What’s Ahead: AI Experiences from Xbox

As we look ahead, we’re focused on how AI can address the barriers and frictions to playing and developing games. This means that we’ll share our AI product innovation earlier on, providing opportunities for players and creators to experiment with and co-build new AI features and capabilities with us. This allows us to make sure that our AI innovations address real problems and add new value to creating or playing with Xbox. 

To develop tools that are used in ways that benefit everyone, our innovation will continue to be built on our commitment to Responsible AI and dedication to developing AI solutions guided by six principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability.

You can expect more exciting announcements this year about how we are using AI to empower game creators and provide the best possible player experience across all devices. Stay tuned for more updates ahead of GDC 2025 on Xbox Wire and our AI Resource Hub as we continue to shape the future of gaming supported by AI.

Want to hear more? Check out a conversation with Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Dom Matthews, Studio Head of Ninja Theory, and Katja Hofmann, Senior Principal Researcher and Lead of the Game Intelligence Team, about today’s news: