World models

VLWM predicts the future in language instead of pixels

When we ask a machine to help us cook dinner or swap a SIM card, it has to do more than recognize the objects in frame — it has to picture how the world will change from one step to the next. Most systems today see pixels and answer in short phrases, and long-horizon planning still does not work. The VLWM (Vision Language World Model) team proposes a different route: describe the future in…

2026-09-19

Matrix-Game 2.0 generates interactive video at 25 FPS on a single H100

Interactive world models are a way to teach AI to sense the world rather than only describe it in words. Until recently, three obstacles stood in the way: there was not enough quality data with precise action labels; classic video diffusion models were too slow to compute and "forgot" the start of the clip; and errors compounded from frame to frame. Matrix-Game 2.0 offers a clear, practical…

2026-09-19

Hafner left DeepMind to put world models inside Chinese humanoids

Hafner, 31, has left Google DeepMind and started a robotics company whose name is not yet on the door. The office in San Francisco's SoMa district is close to empty: one employee on the day of a visit, almost no furniture. The exception runs down the middle of the room, where humanoid robots of different shapes and sizes hang from racks like marionettes. The robots are shipped in from China.…

2026-09-19