There’s An AI Tool That Can Make Super Mario Bros. Levels

A team of six researchers in Denmark has created an AI tool called MarioGPT that can generate endless side-scrolling level layouts that are based on the classic Super Mario Bros. games, Kotaku reports(Opens in a new window).

According to an AI researcher at the University of Copenhagen who worked on the project, the tool uses a “fine-tuned GPT2 model(Opens in a new window)” to turn text prompts like “many pipes, many enemies, little blocks, low elevation” into levels that look almost identical to an actual Super Mario Bros. game.

The researcher, Sebastian Risi, tweeted(Opens in a new window) that the tool doesn’t always manage to create levels based on prompts, though for the most part it “works well.”

The tool was created after the researchers, led by Shyam Sudhakaran, fed OpenAI’s GPT-2 with all of the original levels from Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros 2. 

Tweet(Opens in a new window)

In an eight-page PDF(Opens in a new window), MarioGPT’s makers describe the tool as the “first text-to-level” ever made, and its goal, researchers say, is to make possible the “open-ended generation of an increasingly diverse range of content” and shift the dial away from established ways of making games.

As Kotaku notes, Python users can find study MarioGPT for themselves via GitHub(Opens in a new window), for free.

Meanwhile, in other AI game-related news, Microsoft is experimenting with AI in Minecraft to let players tell the game what to do.

In an internal demo of the AI, players were able to tell the game to build something like a fort or castle, describe how they wanted it to look, and watch as the game followed their instructions. 

There are reportedly no immediate plans to roll the AI tech out in public versions of Minecraft, however.