Google DeepMind has integrated Street View data into Project Genie, its general-purpose world model, letting users generate interactive environments based on real-world locations.
The feature works by selecting a real place in the U.S., picking a visual style — options include “Ocean World,” “Stone Age,” or “B&amp;W film” — and defining a character to explore the resulting environment. Under the hood, it uses what Google calls Maps Imagery Grounding technology to anchor the generated world in actual Street View data.
Beyond the novelty of wandering a stylized version of your old neighborhood, the practical applications are more interesting. Researchers can simulate altered conditions — different weather, rare traffic events, edge cases that almost never happen in the real world — which is exactly the kind of data that’s hard to collect at scale. Waymo is already using a version of this for autonomous vehicle training, running simulations from multiple viewpoints. Robotics teams are using similar setups to train agents in realistic environments without needing physical test spaces.
The results are described as video-game quality, which is impressive but comes with a caveat: the model doesn’t fully understand physics yet. It can generate a convincing-looking flooded street, but it’s not actually simulating fluid dynamics. Researchers expect meaningful improvements within 6 to 12 months.
Project Genie with Street View is rolling out now to Google AI Ultra subscribers ($200/month) globally, though location selection is currently limited to the U.S.

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Google DeepMind has added Street View integration to Project Genie, enabling users to generate interactive, stylized environments from real-world U.S. locations. The technology, called Maps Imagery Grounding, anchors AI-generated worlds in actual Street View data. Key practical applications include training autonomous vehicles (Waymo is already using it) and robotics agents by simulating rare or hard-to-capture real-world conditions like unusual weather or traffic events. The generated environments are described as video-game quality, though physics simulation remains limited. The feature is now available to Google AI Ultra subscribers at $200/month, with location selection restricted to the U.S. for now.

Project Genie can now simulate real streets using Street View imagery