Sony Reveals Gran Turismo Sophy Artificial Intelligence

gamerant.com:

Sony may be gearing up for an artificial intelligence breakthrough with its racing-focused AI, according to the company's new blog post. The so-called Gran Turismo Sophy is a dedicated AI agent that's been purpose-built to be able to go toe-to-toe with professional sim players, and it's already showing promising results.

Specifically, Gran Turismo Sophy seems to be Sony's attempt to revolutionize racing against AI drivers. The potentially ground-breaking AI was revealed as part of Sony and Polyphony Digital's special Race Together event, and the companies claim that Sophy is more than able to hold its own. Perhaps more importantly, it can do so without using rubberbanding and the usual array of catch-up systems that racing games often use.

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What makes Gran Turismo Sophy particularly interesting is that it's quite unlike most other experimental gaming AIs. Unlike, say, the Tetris AI that plays too efficiently, Sophy has been trained from the ground up to take three major considerations into account: physical realism, real-time race tactics, and sports etiquette. The end result is a «bot» that — according to Sony and Polyphony — plays competitively without having to resort to cheating, as racing AIs usually do.

According to Sony's blog post, Gran Turismo Sophy has been trained using a deep reinforcement learning system that leverages SIE's cloud network. Following its training, Sophy could drive aggressively but fairly, control its vehicles naturally without breaking game physics, and optimize racing lines for realistic overtaking techniques. Perhaps more impressively in regard to contemporary video game AI development, Sophy also ended up handily beating the world's best Gran