When Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony AI, and Polyphony Digital announced Gran Turismo Sophy, a “superhuman” AI agent capable of outracing the best Gran Turismo Sports drivers, players wondered where it would fit into the future of the franchise. Well, it turns out that future could be sooner rather than later seeing as it will be added to Gran Turismo 7 in a future update.
How will Gran Turismo Sophy fit into GT7?
Gran Turismo Sophy will be introduced to Gran Turismo 7 in a future update. In an interview with GT Planet, Gran Turismo series creator Kazunori Yamauchi explained Sophy will likely be used in three different ways: “as a teacher that will teach driving to players, a student that will learn sportsmanship from players, and as a friend to race with”. He also refused to “rule out the possibility” of a B-Spec mode where players take on the role of director and Sophy is the team driver. Another function could be to help with balancing the game’s performance, such as the lap times of different cars.
Sophy still has its limitations. At the moment, it has only been trained on select Gran Turismo Sports tracks in specific conditions and using set car combinations. At the moment it hasn’t been tested with changes in the weather or track conditions, but Director of Sony AI America, Peter Wurman, says he expects “the techniques will continue to work under those conditions”. Those concerned with racing against an AI that can beat even the best GT drivers need not worry. Sony’s main aim now is to make an AI that “can give players of all kinds an exciting race experience” and may even be able to drive like a less-experienced driver rather than just driving slower.
In other news, many within the gaming industry are rallying to help those affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Elsewhere, FromSoftware is currently working on a fix for the PS5 save issue that’s affecting Elden Ring.
