Odyssey Just Turned a Video into a Playable Game World

Gaming’s always pushing boundaries. We’ve gone from pixelated graphics to ray-traced realism, from basic NPCs to smart AI-powered enemies. But what if the next big leap doesn’t come from better engines — what if it comes from something that feels like watching a YouTube video… but you can actually play it? That’s what Odyssey is aiming for with its new interactive video demo. It’s early, it’s glitchy, but it might be the beginning of a new wave in AI gaming technology and how we experience real-time interactive video games. Let’s break it down.

What is Odyssey’s Interactive Video?

Interactive video is basically video that you can play like a game. The team at Odyssey describes it as “video you can both watch and interact with, imagined entirely by AI in real-time”. In other words, it looks like a normal video, but you can control what’s happening on the screen. Think of it like a first-person video game, except the world around you isn’t a pre-built 3D level – it’s being generated by AI on the fly. Odyssey even calls it an “early version of the Holodeck” (yes, like the Star Trek thing where you step into a simulated world).

In Odyssey’s demo (which you can actually try out in a web browser), you use WASD keys to wander through different AI-generated scenes: a wooded cabin, a house, a bar, and many more. Every time you reload, the world looks a little different, because nothing is pre-scripted. It’s not a polished AAA game – more like a tech magic trick showing that an AI can create a moving world in real time. As the creators put it, the experience right now “feels like exploring a glitchy dream — raw, unstable, but undeniably new”. In short, interactive video is a brand-new medium that blurs the line between watching and playing.

How It Works

Under the hood, interactive video uses an AI world model instead of a traditional game engine. In simple terms, the AI is trained to predict the next video frame based on what’s happening and what you do. Odyssey explains that their world model “attempts to predict the next state of the world in the form of a video frame” given the current state and an action.

So when you press a key or move your character, the AI figures out what the very next visual should look like and streams it to you. This happens super fast – the system can generate new frames in as little as 40 milliseconds – which is roughly the time between frames in a 24–30 FPS game. In practice, it feels almost instantaneous: you hit a button, and the video responds like a game would.

All this is powered by some heavy-duty cloud hardware (Odyssey is using clusters of high-end GPUs to run the AI). The moment you provide any input, say you turn left or jump, that input is sent to the AI model running on a server. The model then imagines what the next frame should be (based on all the video data it learned from) and sends that frame back to your screen.

Do this 30 times a second and voila: you have an interactive streaming video that changes as you play. It’s like cloud gaming, except there isn’t a pre-designed game at the other end – it’s an AI making it up as it goes. Because this doesn’t rely on a normal game engine, Odyssey notes that improvements won’t come from better coding or graphics cards in your console, but from training better AI models with more data. The current demo is primitive and has plenty of quirks.

Why Gamers Should Care About Odyssey’s AI-Powered Interactive Video?

Here’s where it gets interesting. Interactive video is not trying to replace games, at least not yet. But it does challenge some of the assumptions we’ve had about what makes a game… well, a game.

Today, even the biggest open-world games are still limited by developer time and budget. Every object, every NPC, every mission has to be planned, modeled, textured, and coded. But with interactive AI video, that might not be the case forever. If the AI is good enough, it could generate an infinite, explorable world without any of it being pre-designed. That means a game world that never ends, never repeats, and always adapts.

Imagine a game that doesn’t need level designers. The AI builds the map as you go. You don’t need 300 side quests written in a spreadsheet — the AI creates them based on your playstyle. You don’t need scripted NPCs repeating the same lines — the AI invents conversations dynamically. The whole idea of static game content could be flipped on its head.

Procedural generation has already started pushing boundaries, just look at No Man’s Sky. But this goes way beyond procedural. It could also lead to more personalized gaming experiences. If the AI learns from how you play, it could start shaping the world in ways that reflect your habits, style, or interests.

Of course, gamers value polish, depth, and tight mechanics — all things that AI still struggles with. But this tech isn’t about replacing your favorite AAA title. It’s about inventing a new type of experience. Something more dreamlike. More fluid. Maybe less predictable, but also less limited.

So What Does the Future Look Like?

If you’re picturing the Star Trek Holodeck, you’re not alone. It’s bold, but not unrealistic. Give this a decade, and we might not be watching trailers for new games — we might be stepping into them, live, as they generate around us. Your gaming setup could be as simple as a screen and a controller, but the content? Infinite. Personalized. Alive.

Even if we’re not there yet, interactive video could sneak into games in smaller ways. Maybe dynamic cutscenes that change based on your gameplay. Or procedurally generated missions that feel more authentic and less repetitive. MMOs could evolve in real-time, driven by AI rather than static updates. Sandbox games might become true sandboxes, with no edges, no load zones, no end. You don’t play the story – you live it, and the AI writes it around you.

Of course, it’s still early. The current visuals are glitchy, the controls limited, and there’s no “game” structure to speak of. But that’s how all revolutions start — quiet, clunky, and kind of magical. Interactive video might just be the next leap. It won’t replace our favorite genres, but it could birth new ones.

So if you’re a gamer who loves the idea of exploring untapped potential and being part of something new, keep your eye on this space. Odyssey’s tech is still in its infancy, but it’s walking. And if it learns to run, gaming may never look the same again.