Runway's Solaris is an AI system that generates software interfaces in real time
Key Points
- Runway has unveiled Solaris, an "Interface World Model" that doesn't run user interfaces as code but renders them live and responds directly to clicks or voice.
- The system aims to replace fixed apps with dynamic environments that adapt to the user, and could prove useful for interactive shopping or visual tutorials.
- With text rendering still error-prone and no support for screen readers, the system, which builds on the Gen-4.5 video model, remains a research effort for now.
AI company Runway has unveiled Solaris, the first model in a new category it calls "Interface World Models." Instead of running code, the system generates the user interface frame by frame as you interact with it.
Rather than translating a design into code first, the model renders the interface itself in 720p and responds to clicks, drags, or voice commands. That's a sharp break from how software normally works, where the operating system decides what happens on screen and an app stays the same until someone ships an update.
Runway lists several use cases: In online shopping, the store itself would become the interface, with users dragging a shirt onto a picture of themselves to try it on. A shop would no longer be a fixed layout but would adapt to each user.
For product visualization, you can say "move the table" or "change the color of the couch," and the scene reacts instantly, which Runway sees fitting furniture and interior planning.
The company also sees a use for tutorials and learning. Instead of a text answer like a chatbot gives, Solaris shows the next step visually in its own context, for example as a combustion demo with different materials.
Runway wants the "app" as a fixed unit to disappear
Solaris builds on Runway's video model Gen-4.5 and follows the path the company started with GWM-1. A language model decides how the interface changes, while the world model renders each frame. Runway also sees it as a training ground for AI agents, which still fail at tasks like hotel bookings because they're trained on fixed layouts and can't handle websites that deviate from them.
Runway's bigger claim is that the "app" as a fixed unit will disappear. Today, getting something done means opening the right prebuilt app, one for shopping, one for messages, one for reservations. If an operating system can generate the right interfaces on its own, there's less reason to sort software into a fixed catalog of apps.
An online store would then no longer be a fixed layout that everyone sees the same way, but a generated environment that adapts to each user. Whether people actually want interfaces that keep changing is a question Runway leaves open.
For now, this is still a long way off, as Runway says stable, readable text remains a hard problem to solve even though interfaces depend heavily on it. Long sessions and reliability are open questions too, and a wrong but convincing-looking result can be worse than none at all. A generated interface also has to work with assistive tech like screen readers.
That makes Solaris a research effort for now. Runway is looking for partners for a launch and offers early access through a form.
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