GTA NYC

Two and a half minutes of New York City as if it were a Grand Theft Auto game: photoreal Midtown streets, Knicks fans outside Madison Square Garden, and a GTA-style minimap and wanted stars on screen. Jesse Wellens presented it as a step toward turning the city into a playable game, with the caveat that this was "obviously just rendered videos," and said the work was far enough along that he could create it using Claude.

It passed 350,000 views on X within days. Made with Claude in the loop, it pointed at where several 2026 threads were heading: generated video of real places, assistants running the production, and world models that might one day make a game like this playable for real.