Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony AI, and Polyphony Digital have revealed the “breakthrough project” they teased only a couple of days ago and it turns out its a “superhuman” AI agent they’ve called Gran Turismo Sophy. The agent is capable of outracing the best Gran Turismo Sports drivers and Polyphony is hoping to be able to implement GT Sophy into future Gran Turismo titles.
What is Gran Turismo Sophy?
Gran Turismo Sophy is an AI agent that’s been trained to be able to compete, and eventually beat, the “world’s best championship-level drivers”. One of the skills it has perfected is race car control, making sense of car dynamics, racing lines, and precision maneuvers to be able to drive competitively on every track. The AI also has a grasp of racing tactics like slipstream passing, crossover passes, and defensive maneuvers and these can be implented in a split second to react to rapidly evolving racing situations. Most importantly, though, the AI tries to play fair with sportsmanship rules added so it doesn’t cause collisions or impede on opponents’ driving lines.
The AI agent was tested against four of the best Gran Turismo drivers on two separate occasions. While humans won the first races, the improvements made before the second session saw the AI beat them in time trial races and an FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Championships format race. Sony AI CEO Hiroaki Kitano said:
Gran Turismo Sophy is a significant development in AI whose purpose is not simply to be better than human players, but to offer players a stimulating opponent that can accelerate and elevate the players’ techniques and creativity to the next level. In addition to making contributions to the gaming community, we believe this breakthrough presents new opportunities in areas such as autonomous racing, autonomous driving, high-speed robotics and control.
Sony and Polyphony now hope this development will change the gameplay experience of future Gran Turismo games, although the AI is unlikely to appear in the upcoming Gran Turismo 7 that’s due to be released next month.
In other news, Apex Legends has been rated for PS5 in Europe and Taiwan. Many believed the native version would be released alongside Season 12 but that wasn’t to be. Elsewhere, Phil Spencer has said that he wants more people playing Call of Duty than ever before although he didn’t mention the small matter of Xbox exclusivity.
