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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Rich Pelley

‘A lot worse than expected’: AI Pac-Man clones, reviewed

Two square boxes side by side, with black and blue colouring, small white dots and larger dots in other colours, in a clone of a Pac-Man game.
‘Can anyone make a Pac-Man clone? Could I make one?’ Illustration: AI-generated

There’s a lot going on with video games and generative AI right now. Microsoft and Google have each created models that can dream up virtual worlds, with significant limitations. And people have been using Grok, the gen-AI chatbot from Elon Musk’s xAI, to make rudimentary clones of old arcade games.

All you have to do is type “write me Pong” and AI (sort of) does the rest, albeit quite badly. On Feb 21, xAI employee Taylor Silveira claimed to have created an accurate version of 1980 coin-op Pac-Man using Grok 3, all the ghosts moving perfectly around their maze while Pac-Man chomps down dots, power pills and fruit.

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