Sony introduces Gran Turismo Sophy, an AI capable of competing with the best GT7 players

Racing games are often a fertile testing ground for AI innovations in gaming, and Gran Turismo provides another example. A few weeks before the release of the seventh canonical episode of the series on PS5 and PS4, Sony unveils Sophy, a new intelligent agent capable of competing with the best human players of Gran Turismowhile following a realistic and natural behavior on the track.

This is the first project launched by the Sony AI organization, a research group established by Sony in April 2020 that has been collaborating on the subject for nearly two years with development studio Polyphony Digital and Sony’s cloud and R&D departments. Interactive Entertainment. The complexity of the project is unique, we are told, in that the intention was to create a fast and above all credible virtual pilot. Thus, Sophy not only had to know how to make the best use of the physics of the car and the track, but also to adopt the right strategies in the race, to detect overtaking opportunities, to defend her position, all this while respecting the etiquette of the race. automobile — a final point that is all the more difficult in that it covers very vague rules of propriety, largely subject to interpretation.

A rich and aggressive behavior

This artificial intelligence was created using deep reinforcement learning, a method of deep learning where the success of each simulation is determined by a system of rewards, which the intelligent agent must learn to optimize over time. The learning process was set up, we are told, thanks to Sony Interactive Entertainment’s cloud infrastructure, as well as data collected from the game. Gran Turismo Sports.

It is moreover within this same GT Sports that Sony presented to us, as a demonstration, a race in which four champions of the e-sports scene of Gran Turismo, as well as four cars driven by Sophy. And we have indeed been able to observe on the part of the latter a surprisingly rich and above all very aggressive behavior – swerving to close the inside of a bend, optimizing suction, teasing the limits of the track to open up to the maximum trajectories… So aggressive, even, that we would have questioned at times the famous respect for racing etiquette. As is often done with real racing drivers, of course.

Integration to Gran Turismo 7 will arrive after launch

It remains to be seen how this artificial intelligence will be used. We already know that she will not be present in Gran Turismo 7 from the launch of the latter, on March 4, 2022; but Kazunori Yamauchi, historical director of Polyphony Digital, assures us that it will be integrated later. It could then serve as a driving coach, or quite simply as a virtual racing opponent. But before that, a challenge must be solved: how to adapt the performance of Sophy to that of the player, so that the AI ​​can present an interesting challenge for everyone, and not only for the very best international players. Michael Spranger, COO of Sony AI, begs us to believe that the team is hard at work on the matter. Among the solutions considered, rely on a poorly trained version of Sophy, or impose a handicap on her by adjusting the parameters of her car. We are curious to see the result.