Internal 'Minecraft' demo reportedly uses AI to play the game for you

Microsoft has spent years teaching AI to play Minecraft, but it's apparently making enough progress that the game needs very little human involvement. Semaforsources claim Microsoft has produced an internal demo that lets you control Minecraft simply by telling AI what to do. You may only have to ask the computer to build a structure and watch as it completes the task by itself.

The developer doesn't have any known plans to release the AI control as part of an official Minecraft release, the insiders say. Microsoft declined to comment. It's not clear what AI model the company is using, though the demo reportedly isn't running on the Prometheus AI technology used in Bing. While the company's frequent partner OpenAI trained a model to play Minecraft using videos last year, that technology isn't necessarily involved here.

Past public demos have been relatively limited. At last year's Build conference, Microsoft showed off a Minecraft assistant that used OpenAI's Codex model to perform relatively straightforward tasks, like having a character approach the player or craft items. Based on the description, the private demo may be considerably more sophisticated.

Don't count on Microsoft and other developers using AI to largely replace conventional gameplay. Minecraft is appealing precisely because you put in much of the construction work yourself, after all. However, the reported demo hints at a future where games might offer bots to handle mundane tasks, or even titles where the challenge revolves around finding the right instructions.