Odyssey, a startup founded by self-driving pioneers Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke, has developed an AI-powered tool that can transform text or an image into a 3D rendering. Dubbed Explorer, the tool is capable of generating interactive, real-time scenes from captions like "A Japanese garden, with rich, green foliage."

The technology is similar to the so-called world models recently demoed by DeepMind, World Labs, and Israeli upstart Decart. However, Odyssey claims that its tool is "particularly tuned" for creating photorealistic scenes, thanks to its technical approach. The AI powering Explorer was trained on real-world landscapes captured by the company's custom-designed, 360-degree, backpack-mounted camera system.

One of the key advantages of Explorer is its ability to generate scenes that can be loaded into creative tools such as Unreal Engine, Blender, and Adobe After Effects and hand-edited. This is made possible by the tool's use of gaussian splats, a decades-old volume rendering technique capable of reconstructing realistic scenes. Gaussian splats are widely supported in computer graphics tools.

Odyssey is excited about the potential of Explorer, which it believes could be used in live-action film, hyper-realistic gaming, and new forms of entertainment. The company is also exploring the possibility of generative world motion, which could enable artists to generate and manipulate motion in new and more realistic ways.

However, Odyssey acknowledges that Explorer has several limitations today. The tool takes an average of 10 minutes to generate scenes, and its scenes are relatively low in resolution and not free of distracting visual artifacts. Despite these limitations, the company has already seeded Explorer to production houses such as Garden Studios in the U.K. and a "growing group" of independent artists.

The development of tools like Explorer raises questions about the impact of AI on the creative industries. A recent Wired investigation found that game studios like Activision Blizzard are using AI to cut corners, ramp up productivity, and compensate for attrition. Meanwhile, a 2024 study commissioned by the Animation Guild estimated that over 100,000 U.S.-based film, television, and animation jobs will be disrupted by AI by 2026.

However, Odyssey is committed to collaborating with creative professionals, rather than replacing them. To that end, the company has announced that Ed Catmull, one of the co-founders of Pixar and former president of Disney Animation Studios, has joined its board of directors and invested in Odyssey. The company's goal is to create tools that enable new forms of storytelling and collaboration between humans and machines.

In conclusion, Odyssey's Explorer tool has the potential to revolutionize the way we create and interact with 3D environments. While there are still limitations to be addressed, the company's commitment to collaboration with creative professionals and its focus on photorealistic scenes make it an exciting development in the field of AI-powered computer graphics.