Nvidia Reveal ‘Worlds First’ AI Generated Street Video

Nvidia Reveal AI Technical Demo

Nvidia is one of a number of companies in the world who take AI development very seriously. As such, when it comes to technical demonstrations of what has been achieved, it’s hardly surprising to see the company (more associated with graphics cards) blowing our minds with their innovations.

The latest of these, however, is truly impressive. Using a combination of a deep learning AI and Unreal Engine 4, Nvidia has created a program which will, effectively, generate streets based purely on artificial intelligence.

How Did They Do This?

Firstly, they had to get the AI to understand what a street would look like. As such, they took a lot of sample video from various cities in the world and effectively ‘fed’ it to the AI. From there, the AI was taught how to understand the layout of a street, how it works and what objects would likely appear. With the utilisation of the Unreal Engine 4, the AI is then able to create completely unique streets using AI-generated graphics.

That’s Nice – But What Does This Mean?

Well, the main key implementation that many will draw is its use in gaming. How awesome would it be to play an open world game that was entirely unique in a near photo-realistic manner? It’s certainly a more than a few steps beyond procedurally generated dungeons or the like.

In addition, though, it could also potentially be used as a training program for other AI programs. Self-driving cars, for example.

While Nvidia has revealed the tech demo they do add some caveats. They are keen to emphasise that while it is impressive, it is still exceptionally limited. As such, a ‘practical’ use of this should not be expected for a long time. How long? Well, at least 20 years. The demo does, however, use the recently announced Nvidia RTX Titan, so that is, at least something to be impressed about!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!