This AI-driven Quake 2 demonstration feels like a profound affront to the very essence of existence.

Microsoft have developed a playable version of Quake 2 that runs on generative AI. The “game” cannot currently run for longer than two minutes, has a very low frame rate, unresponsive controls, and is full of blurry textures. But Microsoft’s artificial intelligensia are proud enough of the prototype that they have made it playable online. Would you like to experience a novel type of anguish? Come with me.

The demo is playable on Microsoft’s Copilot site, where they note that “Copilot may make mistakes”. It operates with keyboard controls only and will prompt you with a pop-up message after two minutes to say that the timed demo is over. You can reload the page to play it again.

“In this real-time tech demo, Copilot dynamically generates gameplay sequences inspired by the classic game Quake II,” reads a blurb on a neighbouring Microsoft website. “Every input you make triggers the next AI-generated moment in the game, almost as if you were playing the original Quake II running on a traditional game engine.”

What that actually looks and feels like is a lot of staccato strafing through a surreal slosh of not-quite-right 90s shooter levels. Enemies sometimes appear and you must shoot them an unspecified number of times before they die, although will sometimes seem to reanimate. Approaching a wall and then stepping back will result in a trippy reconfiguration of your surroundings. It is like playing a bad dream of Quake. It is like being trapped in the sad nightmares of John Carmack after an intense binge of VR.

If you’d rather just watch it being played, marketing mogul Geoff Keighley tweeted a demonstration of the technology, as our sister site Eurogamer point out. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t get a positive response from his followers, many of whom work in an industry where jobs and livelihoods are threatened by this technology.

The demo is powered by Microsoft’s Muse tech, which is the result of the corporate giant’s research departments fiddling with AI so that it might help with “game ideation”. Modelling an AI on Quake and its sequel makes sense from one perspective, since it is a quintessential shooter with concrete rules for enemy encounters and level design. The fundamental rules of the modern first-person shooter were founded by these games.

Yet as a fan of the long-lived Quake mapping scene, I play this demo and feel something that oscillates between curiosity and disgust, and it’s probably 90 percent the latter. I like it better when the “ideation” is done by people capable of very cool work, who have come together in recent years to create a legit Quake renaissance.