Gran Turismo 7’s AI Racer Sophy has gotten smarter

Back in February, Polyphony Digital teamed up with Sony’s AI branch to introduce a “revolutionary superhuman racing AI racing agent” known as GT Sophy. The racer was added to Gran Turismo 7, bringing a new level of challenge for players – though only for a week. In the months since then, Sophy seems to have learned a couple new tricks – including being able to impressively drift across tracks.

Releasing a video demonstrating Sophy’s new abilities, Kaushik Subramanian – the senior research scientist at Sony AI – said:

“Over the last two years the team at Sony AI has showcased the competitive racing abilities of an AI agent called GT Sophy. The team has continued development in an effort to push the boundaries of racing. Here we demonstrate how GT Sophy has learned to drift around the track using a precise sequence of driving inputs.”

As can be seen from the video, this is not your average everyday drifting, but has Sophy performing full 360-spins leading into a corner drift all the while recovering seamlessly.

Subramanian continued, “It’s always surprising to see the unique ways in which Sophy learns to drive around the track. We will be continuing our efforts in this development, and we will be working with Polyphony Digital to make GT Sophy a permanent part of the game.”

While video games have always had some rudimentary form of AI, the idea behind GT Sophy 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. It will be interesting to see all the ways in which Sophy has evolved once the AI racer is brought back to GT7.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of Sophy AI? Did you race against it back in February? Can you drift like that in GT7? Let us know down below.

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