Sony and Polyphony Digital have unveiled what they're calling a breakthrough in gaming AI - Gran Turismo Sophy, an artificial intelligence that's successfully mastered Gran Turismo, to the point where it can learn to play better than human players in a fortnight.
Playing the last Gran Turismo game, Gran Turismo Sport on the PlayStation 4, the AI had to learn not just how to deal with the physics of the cars it drove, but also the track conditions, racing tactics and penalties based around infringements like bumping and corner cutting.
The AI has had outings against the best of the best in the Gran Turismo competitive scene, and on its second race day was able to absolutely trounce the opposition, walking away with all the best lap times and top placements.
This is as much a scientific breakthrough as it is a gaming one, as evidenced by the research being published today in the journal Nature, but the aim is nonetheless to make sure that this AI development can help to build more credible and challenging AI opponents to forthcoming Gran Turismo games.
It looks like this hasn't made it out in time to be baked into Gran Turismo 7, which arrives in early March, but a video presentation we sat in on confirmed that Polyphony Digital aims to bring the AI to GT7 in a post-release update.
You can find out more about Gran Turismo Sophy on the official site for the project.