Here’s why Grand Theft Auto games could last FOREVER very soon
In just five years time, artificial intelligence may be able to build endless worlds for some of your fave games, according to tech's big wigs
IMAGINE a future Grand Theft Auto that keeps growing, adding new storylines and weapons, in real-time.
This is what the AI-driven future of gaming looks like. And it could be here in the next five years, according to experts.
Intel exec John Bonini claims machine learning could be trained to understand, and then emulate, the template of any game, creating endless scenarios in the process.
Feed it tons of Star Wars data, and it will build an exhaustive galaxy of characters, quests, and planets – all while you're playing.
Or, to use Bonini's example: "What if you want to create content using the style and look of Blade Runner?"
Intel evidently thinks AI could unlock that aesthetic. So too does EA chief Andrew Wilson.
In an last summer, he described an AI that builds an "infinite character set to act out...stories it's creating in real-time".
That insane five-year ETA also comes from Wilson.
Bonini, on the other hand, is more conservative in his estimates (it could arrive "five or ten" years from now, he told The Sun).
Speaking last week at the Global eSports Forum in Katowice, Poland, he said Intel is bringing its machine learning knowledge (from its work on self-driving cars) over to gaming.
"Could AI make [gaming] ten times better?," he asked the audience.
Intel clearly thinks it can.
In some cases, developers are already chasing those never-ending worlds.
Take , for example: After the disappointment that was No Man's Sky, space simulation fans are turning to the upcoming title as the genre's next big hope.
Crowdfunded to the tune of around $178million (£129million), the game boasts a "persistent universe", although players have moaned of bugs and technical limitations spoiling the fun.
But, that's just scratching the surface.
Bonini is already mulling what happens when you apply AI to virtual reality.
You get something "along the lines of Ready Player One", he said, referring to Steven Spielberg's upcoming sci-fi film.
An adaptation of Ernest Cline's popular novel, the big-budget movie is set in a dystopian future where humans escape into an online world (called the Oasis) teeming with pop culture symbols.
One scene shows the protagonist's virtual avatar driving the Delorean from Back to the Future; in another an army is led by Tracer from Overwatch.
And that, claims Bonini, is what AI could deliver. The intellectual properties – like Star Wars, Marvel, and Alien – are already in video games, he said.
In the future, "it will be up to players to use this AI platform to create their own worlds [in the style of games, movies, and even art] using templates".
He cites – a VR app, currently in open beta, that lets users create and share immersive 3D experiences – as an example of where the tech is heading.
But AI can't make this future a reality on its own. That's why Intel is "working" on memory that's "ten times larger", he said.
That will help developers build worlds at mass scale: "Imagine a Star Wars landspeeder racing thousands of miles to a new area of the landscape," he explained.
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And, these massive games will be cloud-based, according to Bonini.
In other words, they'll be stored online, keeping the parts that aren't being used in "cold storage", while pushing the bits that are being used up to "active use", he said.
A game stored on the cloud could also be played on your telly, smartphone, or AR smart glasses, explained the Intel exec.
Nintendo Switch eat your heart out.
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