From OpenAI’s 4o to Stable Diffusion, AI foundation models that create realistic images from a text prompt are now plentiful. In contrast, foundation models capable of generating full, coherent 3D online environments from a text prompt are only just emerging. Still, it’s only a question of when, not if, these models will become readily available. Now one of Europe’s most prominent AI 3D model researchers, Matthias Niessner, has taken an entrepreneurial leave of absence from his visual computing ...