Google’s Stadia uses Style Transfer ML to manipulate video game environments

At a press conference today during the 2019 Game Developers Conference, Google took the wraps off of Stadia, its cloud-powered gaming service, and demoed a particularly eye-catching feature: Style Transfer ML. Through style transfer, a machine learning technique that recomposes images in the aesthetic of other images, it enables game developers to map textures and color palettes from artwork, photos, and still images to game environments automatically.

“We’re doing our part to empower the artist inside of every developer,” Erin Hoffman-John, lead prototyper at Google, said onstage. “What excites us and some of our partners so far, is how many playable art styles we can create just by feeding it more and more images. It inspires and empowers our artists to get the visions in their heads into [games] in a whole new way.”