GTA 7 Will Be Built 'In A Twin Of The Real World' Says Former Googler Pointing Towards Rapid Development In AI-Based Mapping

Former Google Maps product manager Bilawal Sidhu said that he is confident the next Grand Theft Auto game — the one after GTA 6 — will be built in a virtual twin of the real world, not a rendered version of it.

What Happened: In an episode of “The Next Wave” podcast, hosted by AI enthusiasts Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lands, guest Sidhu, a former product manager for 3D experiences on the Google Maps and AR/VR teams, unveiled his predictions about the future of gaming and AI technologies.

Sidhu, who also hosts the Ted AI Show, discussed the evolving intersection of real-world modeling and gaming, particularly highlighting the development of the next installment in the Grand Theft Auto series.

Sidhu revealed, “The next GTA is absolutely going to be built in like a twin of the real world. Maybe this is the last GTA that humans will build manually to emulate the real world.”

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Why it matters: Sidhu’s comments suggest that there’s a major shift taking place towards using highly advanced AI technologies to create games that are virtual twins of our physical environment. This method, already utilized in popular games like Call of Duty and Battlefront, uses reality capture technology to improve realism and is poised to reach new heights in future applications.

While games happen to be the first applications to tap into this kind of tech, its applications extend beyond gaming.

“Whether you’re trying to do anything from building stuff to disaster planning, the range of applications is just immense,” states an enthused Sidhu.

This technology, according to the former Google man, could revolutionize how we prepare for and manage real-world challenges by allowing us to simulate and analyze outcomes in a controlled digital space.

In March, Google’s DeepMind introduced the Scalable Instructable Multiworld Agent (SIMA), an artificial-intelligence (AI) model capable of playing various video games with human-like abilities. Known for its capacity to understand natural language instructions and execute tasks across diverse virtual environments, SIMA represents a significant milestone in AI development.

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