There are impressive technical demos, there are questionable technical demos, and then there is publicly showing off an unauthorized Nintendo port while your employer’s name is attached to your profile.
A Google AI developer appears to have discovered that distinction in real time.
AUTOMATON reports that Ammaar Reshi, lead product and design manager for Google AI Studio, posted footage of the new The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake running on an iPhone Duo on November 7. Reshi said he used Gemini 4 as part of the work. The post drew criticism and was deleted about a day later.
The Problem Was Bigger Than Showing Off a Port
This was not an official mobile version, and the method reportedly went beyond ordinary emulation. The project rewrote Nintendo Switch executable code so it could run on Apple silicon. That immediately raised questions about copying, modifying, and reverse-engineering software covered by Nintendo’s platform terms.
The optics made the whole thing stranger. Reshi was not an anonymous hobbyist posting a weekend experiment from an account with twelve followers. He publicly identified himself as a person helping lead one of Google’s major AI development tools, then presented the port as an example of what that technology could accomplish.
In other words, the demo did not merely invite people to debate the legality of unofficial ports. It made a Google employee’s judgment part of the story.
The deleted post does not explain how the game files were obtained, how much of the conversion was performed by Gemini, or why Reshi removed it. Google and Nintendo have not announced any involvement with the project.
AI Can Make Bad Ideas Faster Too
Generative AI companies love demos that compress days of technical work into a few prompts. This one offered a less flattering version of that sales pitch: lowering a technical barrier can also make it easier to rush past the boring questions about permission, ownership, and whether the finished trick should be posted at all.
Ocarina of Time launched for Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5. Its unauthorized iPhone appearance lasted considerably less time.
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