Sony heralds ‘breakthrough’ AI project from Gran Turismo 7 team

metro.co.uk:

Sony is teasing a new AI project, presumably related to Gran Turismo 7, which will be revealed in only a couple of days.

If you thought last week’s Gran Turismo 7 State of Play had everything you needed to know about the racing sim, you may be wrong as developer Polyphony Digital is working on a new artificial intellegence project for Sony.

It’s not confirmed if it has anything to do with Gran Turismo 7, but Polyphony has worked on almost nothing but the Gran Turismo series since 1999, with the exception of 2006’s motorcycle racer Tourist Trophy.

Plus, the teaser trailer has a very heavy emphasis on driving, at one point dropping the phrase ‘race together’ alongside a moving graphic of the inner workings of a car.

Towards the end, you can even see advertising for Gran Turismo 7, with the heart symbol having the same red and blue colouring of the game’s box art and series logo.

The official Sony AI Twitter account is keeping a tight lid on the details, but it does say that it will be announcing its ‘breakthrough project’ this week on Wednesday, February 9.

If this is to do with Gran Turismo 7, it begs the question why it wasn’t detailed in last week’s State of Play. Assuming it involves improving the artificial intelligence of rival cars it may be a system similar to the Drivatars from Microsoft’s Forza games, although Microsoft has been deemphasising their use in recent games.

Another possibility is that it’s related to Sony’s plans to break into car manufacturing. It announced a car concept in early 2020 called the Vision-S and, this past January, unveiled another one at CES 2022, according to Auto Express.

Tesla has already begun selling self-driving cars so maybe Sony wants a piece of that pie too. Even though autonomous