AI avatar creation tool to boost gaming industry
NVIDIA released new AI services and hardware in CES, covering game and generative artificial intelligence or AIGC.
Chinese gaming firms are adopting NVIDIA's new generative AI tool ACE, which brings digital avatars "individual, lifelike personalities and interactions to video games," the tech giant said during a Consumer Electronics Show (CES) event on Tuesday.
The ACE or Avatar Cloud Engine is now used by top Chinese gaming developers, including Tencent, NetEase and miHoYo, with expectations that generative AI can greatly enhance work efficiency and image quality and cut cost.
With ACE and DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling ) techs, AI can creates expressive facial animations from audio sources, build customizable multilingual speech and dialogues, generate "seven out of eight pixels" in games and accelerate ray tracing effects by up to 4x with better image quality, NVIDIA said.
It's a milestone moment for AI in games, which will lay the foundation to bring digital avatars with individual, lifelike personalities and interactions to video games, said Tencent.
"It's making games smarter and more playable by employing gaming AI technology, ultimately creating a more immersive experience for players," said Hu Zhipeng, NetEase's senior vice president.
Considering NVIDIA's leading position in AI and computing graphic sectors, it will unlock AI's potential in consumer and gaming market, industry officials said.
Currently, more than 100 million computers globally are using NVIDIA's RTX GPUs, while over 500 games and apps support its RTX techs.
More AI PCs will debut with NVIDIA's AI-enhanced Super GPUs.
During CES, NVIDIA also released three new Super GPUs with amplified performance, generative AI capabilities at reasonable prices. They cost from 4,899 yuan (US$690) and start sales this month.
The new GPU release enriches NVIDIA's offerings in China in different price ranges, while enhanced AI capabilities fit the coming AI PC era, as PC vendors including Lenovo adopt NVIDIA's new Super GPUs.
AI PCs, which can operate AI apps such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion on personal computer devices locally, can personalize user experience on a deeper level while protecting data privacy.
In China, 54.7 percent of new PCs will be AI PCs in 2024, compared with 8.1 percent in 2023, according to a recent research by Lenovo and International Data Corp (IDC).
With a bunch of CES releases also covering robot and smart driving, NVIDIA's share price surged 6.43 percent to hit a record high of US$522.53.
