If you’re not familiar with the concept of “world models” just yet, a storm of activity at the start of 2025 gives every indication it may soon become a well-known term. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, used his keynote presentation at CES to announce a new platform, Cosmos, for what they’re calling “world foundation models.” Cosmos is a generative AI tool that produces virtual-world-like videos. The next day, Google’s DeepMind revealed similar ambitions with a project led by a former OpenAI engineer. This all comes several months after an intriguing startup, World Labs, achieved unicorn status—a startup valued $1 billion or more—within only four months to do the same thing. To understand what world models are, it’s worth pointing out that we’re at an inflection point in the way we build and deploy intelligent machines like drones, robots, and autonomous vehicles. Rather than explicitly programming behavior, engineers are turning to 3D computer simulation and AI to let the machines teach themselves. This means physically accurate virtual worlds are becoming an essential source of training data to teach machines to perceive, understand, and navigate three-dimensional space.

Full opinion : A ChatGPT Moment Is Coming for Robotics. AI World Models Could Help Make It Happen.