Claude AI is playing Pokemon on Twitch
Claude, the AI, is taking on Pokémon Red—and it’s struggling. Hours into its Twitch stream, the model found itself blocked by a simple rock wall. No matter how hard it tried, walking through solid stone wasn’t an option. The Twitch chat had a field day:
“Who would win? A computer AI with thousands of hours of programming, or one rock wall?”
Eventually, Claude figured out it could just go around.
Watching Claude play is both maddening and mesmerizing. It moves at a Slowpoke’s pace, deliberating every step with excruciating caution. Onscreen, its left side displays an intricate breakdown of its reasoning, while the right shows the game in real-time—turning simple actions into a saga of decision-making.
At one point, Claude attempted to find Professor Oak in his lab but got confused by other NPCs in the room. Spotting a character in a white coat, it made an optimistic assumption:
“I notice a new character has appeared below me—a character with black hair and what appears to be a white coat at coordinates (2, 10). This might be Professor Oak! Let me go down and talk to him.”
It wasn’t Oak. It was an NPC Claude had already spoken to multiple times. The Twitch chat erupted—some in frustration, others in nostalgia.
“Guys, chill,” one user reassured. “Remember when we spent ten exits and entrances just trying to figure this out?”
For longtime Twitch users, Anthropic’s AI-powered playthrough feels like a callback. Over a decade ago, Twitch Plays Pokémon captivated millions, letting the chaotic hive mind of chat control the game. It was a beautiful mess of democracy and anarchy, proving that even the simplest tasks could become Herculean with too many cooks in the kitchen.
Now, AI is attempting what thousands of humans once struggled with together—but there’s a difference. Twitch Plays Pokémon was a communal experiment, a shared journey. Claude’s adventure, in contrast, makes us spectators rather than participants. It’s an AI-era echo of a larger trend: the shift from collective online experiences to solitary ones.
The question remains: Can AI ever match the magic of human chaos? Or is it doomed to keep talking to the wrong NPCs, forever searching for Professor Oak?
Source: TechCrunch
