Runway’s New AI Model Creates Digital Worlds Without Code

The AI company Runway has unveiled a new type of AI model it’s calling an interface world model, allowing you to create interactive websites and more by directly interfacing with elements on screen. 

Announced on Monday, the new model, named Solaris, doesn’t require hard programming knowledge to create something new, potentially opening up a new world of design possibilities for those without typical coding skills. This isn’t vibe coding, though — this is live rendering in a way we haven’t seen before. 

Runway makes this novel model work by combining reasoning and rendering. Solaris itself generates the interface frame by frame, while a language model “determines how that interface evolves.” The combination of the two enables real-time environments that adapt to how you interact with them.

Solaris generates digital environments in real time, frame by frame, creating applications or other interfaces. When you click on or drag an element, the model will treat these interactions as conditioning signals to generate additional frames. It really needs to be seen to be believed, and if it works as well as some of the demo videos do, we may be at a point where effortless design is within reach for everyone. 

Since the model is entirely visual, there are a lot of interesting things you can do with it. Runway gives the example of using an image of yourself as a reference point in a clothing store, where you would simply click on a new shirt on the clothing rack and drag it onto you to see how it looks. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen AI help you try on clothes, but it’s very different from what we’ve seen from Google. 

You can also provide text-based prompt instructions, like asking to change the color of an object or move an element in a photo somewhere else. 

Solaris essentially feels like a livestreaming video that constantly changes in response to user interaction.

AI world models are expected to be the next big thing, and Solaris is one of the fruits of this next frontier. World models extend themselves beyond the realms of a typical large language model as they’re built to translate and transform our physical world. 

The announcement did not specify when Solaris would be available to customers, and Runway did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Blake has over a decade of experience writing for the web, with a focus on mobile phones, where he covered the smartphone boom of the 2010s and the broader tech scene. When he’s not in front of a keyboard, you’ll most likely find him playing video games or watching horror movies.

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