PlayStation teams up with AMD to improve graphics and gameplay using AI

Sony is set to continue their partnership with AMD and will be working on ‘Project Amethyst’. As announced during the recent technical presentation, by lead architect of the PS5 and PS5 Pro Mark Cerny, this new project will utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to create tech that will further improve graphics and gameplay.

These improvements will likely be a part of the next iteration of PlayStation. With graphical advancements in games like ray tracing, higher resolution texture and other things becoming more demanding, Cerny believes the use of machine learning can help make things better.

This will be done creating a new architecture that will deal with the lightweight convolutional neural networks (CNNs) which connects to the other goal by creating a set of high quality CNNs for game graphics that will help in more extensive use of ray tracing and path tracing.

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A good example is PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) introduced in the PS5 Pro, which upscales a lower resolution image into higher quality without sacrificing performance. What’s even better news is that the technology will not be exclusive to the PlayStation platform, meaning AMD’s RDNA can also make use of this tech in their GPUs.

'Amethyst is not about proprietary technology for PlayStation'

Project Amethyst is mainly focused on providing a better gaming experience using AI/Machine Learning for as many gamers as possible. This is one of the reason why it will not be a proprietary technology for the new PlayStation devices.

“Amethyst is not about proprietary technology for PlayStation. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Through this technology collaboration, we’re looking to support broad work and machine learning across a variety of devices,” Cerny said. While it is just a start of the multi-year collaboration project, fans are quite excited on this development. Video game hardware in general is shifting heavily towards the use of AI, with Nvidia currently leading the pack. Hopefully there will be more competition in future.