Back in February, Polyphony Digital teamed up with Sony’s AI branch to introduce a “revolutionary superhuman racing AI racing agent” known as SophyAI. The racer was added to Gran Turismo 7, bringing a new level of challenge for players – though only for a week. Following Sophy’s successful debut, Polyphony looks set to implement the new AI in a permanent manner.
In a video uploaded to YouTube (which has since been privatised) Sony confirmed that they are planning to bring SophyAI to Gran Turismo 7 in a more permanent way, with the video’s description reading as follows:
“So, what's next? We're working with Polyphony to try to bring this to the game in a much larger, permanent sense so that GT Sophy is available to cover a lot of tracks with a lot of cars and available for a much wider range of playing skills.”
While video games have always had some rudimentary form of AI, the idea behind SophyAI is to create a racing rival which feels like a human is behind the wheel, adapting to the ever-changing situations in a realistic manner. Those who raced against Sophy back in February praised the AI and the ways in which it requires you to give you full attention to the race at hand.
While GT7 is known as ‘The Real Racing Simulator’ the addition of SophyAI as a permanent fixture could turn Gran Turismo 7 into the ‘real’ Real Racing Simulator.
KitGuru says: Did you go up against Sophy back in February? What did you think? Will this revolutionise racing sims? Let us know down below.