According to Cointelegraph, artificial intelligence startup World Labs officially launched on September 13, boasting a valuation of over $1 billion and securing more than $230 million in funding. The company aims to develop 'spatial intelligence' systems, a significant leap from current generative AI models that interact with the world through text, audio, and video.
World Labs was co-founded by Fei-Fei Li, a prominent figure in AI research and former Google Cloud AI head. Often referred to as the 'Godmother of AI,' Li is also the co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. The company's primary product, 'Large World Models' (LWMs), seeks to advance AI capabilities by enabling models to understand and interact with the world in three dimensions, incorporating physics and the passage of time.
In a blog post announcing the launch, World Labs highlighted the limitations of current AI models, which perceive the world through a 2D lens. The company aims to bridge this gap by creating AI that can model and reason about objects, places, and interactions in 3D space and time. This advancement is expected to unlock new capabilities for creative professionals such as artists, designers, developers, and engineers, allowing them to imagine and create their own virtual worlds.
The concept resembles a reverse metaverse for AI, where enterprise metaverse technology is often used to train employees for hazardous environments. An AI model capable of exploring real-world or metaverse equivalents could lead to more intelligent models across various domains, particularly in robotics and virtual worlds. Ultimately, World Labs aims to develop an AI model capable of generating entire 3D virtual worlds, similar to how modern language models like ChatGPT generate text.