An interesting comparison is between AlphaZero and MuZero[0], the latter having not been given the rules and has improved upon AlphaZero in Go.

> "MuZero really is discovering for itself how to build a model and understand it just from first principles." — David Silver, DeepMind

So yes to both: statistical and a world model.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuZero