Xbox has officially opened the generative AI floodgates, and Phil Spencer wants to use it for game preservation and save titles that "were maybe tied to unique pieces of hardware"

Xbox has unveiled its generative AI project Muse, a "generative AI model of a video game that can generate game visuals, controller actions, or both." The publisher is not being specific about this model's exact uses, but has outlined some potential applications in its announcement. One of those proposed uses is game preservation.

"Today, countless classic games tied to aging hardware are no longer playable by most people," Xbox says in its announcement post. "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."

"One of the things we care a lot about at Xbox is game preservation," Phil Spencer says in a video accompanying the announcement. "And I think about an opportunity to have models learn about older games, games that were maybe tied to unique pieces of hardware where that engine on that hardware... Time will erode the amount of hardware that's out there that can actually play a game."

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Spencer suggests that "gameplay data and video" could help build an AI model which "could learn old games and really make them portable to any platform where these models could run. I think that's really exciting. We've talked about game preservation as an activity for us, and these models and their ability to learn completely how a game plays, without the necessity of the original engine running on the original hardware, I think opens up a ton of opportunity."

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The current model Muse is built on the 2020 multiplayer game Bleeding Edge, in part due to developer Ninja Theory's close proximity to Microsoft Research in Cambridge. A few tiny bits of footage in the blog linked above suggest that Muse can at least create a reasonable facsimile of the game, but whether it can genuinely preserve any game remains to be seen, and gaming historians are more than a little skeptical.

"I actually do think an AI model could observe and replicate game logic," Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi says on Bluesky, "and that might even be a useful tool for development! But this is like saying a photocopy of a painting is 'preservation.' It's misleading and an insult to the thankless work we archivists do. I'm offended and sickened by this."

VGHF library director Phil Salvador puts it even more simply: "Generative AI video is a great way to preserve video games, in the sense that mirages are a great source of water."

Whatever form Muse and the AI models that follow end up taking remains to be seen, and this technology is admittedly still in its infancy - maybe someday it really will be able to watch a bunch of Super Mario Bros. footage and pop out a perfect replica of a classic. But that's a dream about the what the future of technology might be able to do, as is the case with much of generative AI.

Meanwhile, the process of preservation is facing legal challenges from the industry: Publishers are absolutely terrified "preserved video games would be used for recreational purposes," so the US copyright office struck down a major effort for game preservation in 2024.