I built an AI that teaches itself to play Mario from scratch using Python it starts knowing absolutely nothing

Hey everyone!

I built a Mario AI bot that learns to play completely by itself using Reinforcement Learning. It starts with zero knowledge it doesn’t even know what “right” or “jump” means and slowly figures it out through pure trial and error.

Here’s what it does:

• Watches the game screen as pixels
• Tries random moves at first (very painful to watch 😂)
• Gets rewarded for moving right and penalized for dying
• Over thousands of attempts it figures out how to actually play

The tech stack is all Python:

• PyTorch for the neural network
• Stable Baselines3 for the PPO algorithm
• Gymnasium + ALE for the game environment
• OpenCV for screen processing

The coolest part is you can watch it learn in real time through a live window. At first Mario just runs into walls and falls in holes. After a few hours of training it starts jumping, avoiding enemies and actually progressing through the level.

No GPU needed — runs entirely on CPU so anyone can try it!

🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/Teraformerrr/mario-ai-bot

Happy to answer any questions about how it works!