Musk announces Grok 3-powered xAI gaming studio to develop 'AI games' with photo-realistic graphics

Musk helps out at Memphis
(Image credit: xAI on Twitter/X)

During a broadcast showcasing the newly-launched Grok 3, Elon Musk and xAI announced their intentions to begin building a new games studio. While details remain light for now, the developers showcased that Grok 3 can generate a facsimile of Tetris using Python.

"We're launching an AI gaming studio at xAI. If you're interested in joining us in building AI games, please join xAI," Musk said during the live stream.

No further details were given to the public regarding the nature of the studio itself, its intentions, the direction that xAI might take in what it seeks to do, or what it might develop. A social media post from an xAI employee showcased that the fledgling team currently consists of nine members — including Musk himself.

In another example posted by a user, Grok 3 can generate a version of the basic 2D title Bubble Trouble, featuring physics, collisions, and a basic 2D UI. However, the user's prompt revealed that Grok wasn't quite able to generate the retro-inspired sound effects that they had described.

Musk further chimed in to mention that xAI's new game studio was working on a way to "integrate photo-realistic graphics" into AI games.

Musk also claims that Grok can also improve the graphics resolutions of titles simply by prompting the LLM. However, it's not explained if this has to be done in a game that's currently being created by Grok itself or if it might debut as a discrete technology, like Nvidia's DLSS Super Resolution or AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution.

However, whether or not the AI-grounded studio can create "a dynamically generated video game" that is more complex than the simple 2D titles that Grok 3 can seemingly produce remains to be seen, especially considering Musk's goal of implementing photo-realistic graphics.

A screen showing Grok 3's ability to create a version of Tetris.

Grok 3's version of Tetris isn't photorealistic — yet. (Image credit: xAI: Grok 3 Launch Video)

While the xAI games studio is clearly in its early stages, Grok 3, xAI's latest LLM, has showcased impressive benchmarks. Both the Grok-3 and Grok-3 mini models can outperform the likes of GPT-4o, Gemini-2 Pro, DeepSeek-V3, and Claude 3.5 Sonnet across various categories.

The LLM was trained using 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs at the Colossus Supercluster in Memphis, utilizing parallelized training for development.

While details about Musk's new initiative remain muddy, some mainstream gaming studios are beginning to adopt mainstream AI into development workflows. Gaming giant Capcom shared in January that it's using generative AI to come up with "unique ideas" for background assets in collaboration with Google Cloud. The developer is said to be utilizing tools such as Gemini Pro, Gemini Flash, Imagen, and Vertex AI.

Right now, Grok 3 is enjoying the limelight, so it may be a while until we hear from whatever xAI is cooking up. Musk intends to seemingly build a fully-fledged games studio, instead of tools for developers to utilize and implement into their workflows.

The billionaire's intent to scale up the Colossus supercluster to over a million GPUs might speed up the development of newer AI models in the future, aiding the efforts of the fledgling studio.

Sayem Ahmed
Subscription Editor

Sayem Ahmed is the Subscription Editor at Tom's Hardware. He covers a broad range of deep dives into hardware both new and old, including the CPUs, GPUs, and everything else that uses a semiconductor.

  • hotaru251
    please of please let him sink time & money into this and let it fail so he loses more $.

    Nobody cares about photo realistic graphics in 99% of games.
    Reply
  • pclaughton
    Of all the things I will never buy, I will never buy these games the most.
    Reply
  • Blastomonas
    Like he has the time to make a useful contribution to this venture.. How many projects can a single person be affiliated with and it not simply being a rubber stamping exercise.
    Reply
  • lmcnabney
    Blastomonas said:
    Like he has the time to make a useful contribution to this venture.. How many projects can a single person be affiliated with and it not simply being a rubber stamping exercise.
    He doesn't do anything with any of them. He just shoots his mouth off. Sometimes he has hired engineers that know what they are doing (SpaceX) and other times he doesn't (Twitter and Boring Company). AAA games take many years to develop and I doubt he wants to piggyback on someone else's engine (I'm looking at YOU UE5). The fact that he gets away with making pronouncements like this tells you how bankrupt our civilization is now.
    Reply
  • vanadiel007
    He should name the Company "Elons maps"
    Reply
  • Neilbob
    The very idea of 'AI Games' makes me feel completely numb.

    Maybe a text-based adventure could work, but knowing how all these Ay Eyes are 'trained', I'd expect lots of instances of things like 'payed' (paid) and 'defiantly' (definitely). And lets not even get in to their, there, they're, where, were, wear...
    Reply
  • SomeoneElse23
    And... the Elon haters are out in full force.

    Dunno why people can't just be nice, even to those they disagree with.
    Reply
  • salgado18
    How many years and billions of dollars will it take to create the first tomb raider, complete with tombs, riddles, puzzles, enemies and secrets? I bet that, until then, AI tools will already be mainstream, and actual developers will be able to create GTA-class games in a year or so.

    Anyway, always love to see billionaires giving back money to the economy.
    Reply
  • SomeoneElse23
    Dustyboy1492 said:
    <<Comment removed by moderator>>

    Hate gets you nowhere.
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    Please focus on the tech aspects of the article. Out of bounds comments removed. Thank you.
    Reply