Runway has announced a major advancement in its AI roadmap with the launch of its first world model called GWM 1, along with a significant upgrade to its Gen 4.5 video model. The company framed this dual launch as a step toward delivering production ready systems in an industry that is rapidly moving beyond research prototypes.
GWM 1 signals Runway’s official move into the growing world model space, a field actively pursued by leading AI labs and large technology companies. These models aim to simulate how the real world works, allowing AI systems to understand physics, movement, and continuity without being exposed to every scenario during training. Runway says its method focuses on predicting frames one at a time, helping the model build a realistic sense of how environments behave.
The launch comes shortly after Gen 4.5 gained attention for outperforming models from major competitors on the Video Arena leaderboard. Runway now describes GWM 1 as more general than other world models such as Google’s Genie 3, positioning it as a foundation for robotics, life sciences, and other applied areas.
Along with GWM 1, Runway introduced three specialised versions of the system. GWM Worlds helps users generate interactive environments from prompts or images, building scenes with an understanding of geometry, lighting, and physics at 24 fps and 720p. GWM Robotics focuses on synthetic data for robotic training and can simulate changing conditions like weather or obstacles. Runway says it is already speaking with robotics companies and expects to offer access through an SDK. GWM Avatars targets realistic digital humans for communication, training, and behavioural simulation, an area already explored by several startups and technology firms.
The company also rolled out an upgraded version of Gen 4.5 that now includes native audio, character consistent long form video creation, and multi shot storytelling. Users can create up to one minute of video with dialogue, ambient sound, or camera transitions. They can also edit or replace audio tracks and combine multi shot videos of any length directly within the system. This brings Gen 4.5 closer to the full video creation pipelines offered by competing platforms. The updated model is available to all paid users.
Runway’s GWM 1 ecosystem appears designed to function as both a research tool and an applied solution. With rising interest across simulation, gaming, virtual production, and robotics, the company’s latest releases show that world models are steadily shifting from concept to real world use.
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