The AI revolution returned to where it started this week, putting powerful new tools in the hands of gamers and content creators.
Generative AI models that will bring realistic characters to games and applications and new GPUs for gamers and creators were among the highlights of a news-packed keynote Monday ahead of this week’s CES show in Las Vegas.
“Today, NVIDIA is at the center of the latest technology transformation: generative AI,” said Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of GeForce at NVIDIA, who was joined by company executives to demonstrate products and partnerships in gaming, content creation and robotics.
A launchpad for generative AI
As AI becomes more mainstream, Fisher said NVIDIA’s RTX GPUs, with more than 100 million units shipped, play a central role in the growing field of generative AI, exemplified by innovations such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion.
In October, NVIDIA released the TensorRT-LLM library for Windowsaccelerating large language models, or LLMs, like Llama 2 and Mistral by up to 5x on RTX PCs.
And with our new Chat with RTX playground, released later this month, enthusiasts can connect an RTX-accelerated LLM to their own data, from locally stored documents to YouTube videos, using generation augmented by recoveryor RAG, a technique for improving the accuracy and reliability of generative AI models.
Fisher also introduced TensorRT acceleration for Stable Diffusion XL and SDXL Turbo in the popular text-to-image conversion application Automatic1111, delivering up to 60% performance improvement.
NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) microservices debut with generative AI models for digital avatars
NVIDIA ACE is a technology platform that brings digital avatars to life using generative AI. ACE AI models are designed to run in the cloud or locally on the PC.
In an ACE demo featuring Convaï new technologies, Seth Schneider, senior product manager at NVIDIA, showed how it works.
First, the player’s voice is fed into NVIDIA’s automatic speech recognition model, which translates speech into text. Then the text is placed in an LLM to generate the character’s response.
After that, the text response is vocalized using a text-to-speech model, which is passed to an animation model to create a realistic lip sync. Finally, the dynamic character is restored in the game scene.
At CES, NVIDIA Announces ACE Production Microservices for Automatic Speech Recognition NVIDIA Audio2Face and NVIDIA Riva. Available now, each template can be integrated by developers individually into their pipelines.
NVIDIA also announces that game and interactive avatar developers are pioneering how ACE and generative AI technologies can be used to transform interactions between players and non-playable characters in games and applications. Developers adopting ACE include Convaï, Charisma.AI, In the world, miHoYo, NetEase Games, Our palm, Tencent, Ubisoft And UneeQ.
Getty Images Launches Generative AI by iStock and AI Image Generation Tools Powered by NVIDIA Picasso
Generative AI allows designers and marketers to create concept images, social media content, and more. Today, iStock by Getty Images is launching a genAI service based on NVIDIA Picasso, an AI foundry for visual design, Fisher announced.
The iStock service allows anyone to create 4K images from text using an AI model trained on Getty Images’ extensive catalog of licensed, commercially safe creative content. New editing application programming interfaces giving customers powerful control over generated images will also be available soon.
The generative AI service is available today on istock.com, with advanced editing capabilities released via the API.
NVIDIA Introduces GeForce RTX 40 SUPER Series
Fisher announced a new series of GeForce RTX 40 SUPER GPU with more gaming performance and generative AI.
Fisher said the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER can power fully ray-traced games at 4K. It’s 1.4x faster than the RTX 3080 Ti without frame generation in the most graphics-intensive games. With 836 AI TOPS, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation delivers an additional performance boost, making the RTX 4080 SUPER twice as fast as an RTX 3080 Ti.
Creators can generate videos with Stable Video Diffusion 1.5x faster and images with Stable Diffusion XL 1.7x faster. The RTX 4080 SUPER has more cores and faster memory, giving it a performance advantage at the great new price of $999. It will be available from January 31.
Next up is the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER. NVIDIA added more cores and increased the frame buffer to 16 GB and the memory bus to 256 bits. It’s 1.6 times faster than a 3070 Ti and 2.5 times faster with DLSS 3, Fisher said. The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER will be available starting January 24 for $799.
Fisher also introduced the RTX 4070 SUPER. NVIDIA added 20% more cores, making it faster than the RTX 3090 while using a fraction of the power. And with DLSS 3, it’s 1.5x faster in the most demanding games. It will be available for $599 starting January 17.
NVIDIA RTX Remix Open Beta Launches This Month
There are over 10 billion game mods downloaded every year. With Remix RTX, modders can remaster classic games with full ray tracing, DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex, and generative AI tools that transform low-resolution textures into physically accurate 4K materials. The RTX Remix app will be released in open beta on January 22.
RTX Remix has already delivered great remasters in NVIDIA Portal with RTX and the modder does Portal: Prelude RTX. Now Orbifold Studios is using RTX Remix to develop Half-Life 2 RTX: an RTX remix projecta community remaster of one of the highest rated games of all time.
Discover this news Half-life 2 RTX gameplay trailer:
Twitch and NVIDIA launch multi-encode live streaming
Twitch is one of the most popular platforms for content creators, with over 7 million streamers broadcasting live each month to 35 million daily viewers. Fisher explained that these viewers use all kinds of internet devices and services.
Yet many Twitch streamers limit themselves to streaming at a single resolution and quality level. As a result, they have to broadcast with lower quality to reach more viewers.
To address this issue, Twitch, OBS, and NVIDIA announced enhanced streaming, supported by all RTX GPUs. This new feature allows streamers to transmit up to three simultaneous streams to Twitch at different resolutions and qualities so that every viewer gets an optimal experience.
Beta signups begin today and will go live later this month. Twitch will also experiment with 4K and AV1 on GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs to deliver even better streaming quality and higher resolution.
“New wave” of AI-ready RTX laptops
RTX is the fastest growing laptop platform, growing 5x over the last four years. More than 50 million devices are used by gamers and creators around the world.
Others are arriving. Fisher announced “a new wave” of RTX laptop launches from all the major manufacturers. “With powerful RT and Tensor cores, every RTX laptop is AI-ready for the best gaming and AI experiences,” Fisher said.
With an installed base of 100 million GPUs and 500 RTX games and applications, GeForce RTX is the world’s largest platform for gamers, creators and, now, generative AI.
Activision and Blizzard Games adopt RTX
More than 500 games and applications now benefit from it NVIDIA RTX technologysaid Kristina Bartz, senior director of consumer marketing at NVIDIA, including Alan wakes up 2which won three awards at this year’s Game Awards.
It’s a list that continues to grow with 14 new RTX titles announced at CES.
Horizon Forbidden Westthe critically acclaimed sequel to Horizon Zero Dawnwill arrive on PC at the start of the year with the Burning Shores expansion, accelerated by DLSS 3.
Pax Dei is a massively multiplayer online social sandbox game inspired by legends from medieval times. Developed by Mainframe Industries with veterans from CCP Games, Blizzard and Remedy Entertainment, Pax Dei will launch in Early Access on PC with AI-accelerated DLSS 3 this spring.
Last summer, Diablo IV launched with DLSS 3 and immediately became the best-selling Blizzard game. RTX ray tracing will now arrive Diablo IV in March.
Day passes and G-SYNC technology come to GeForce NOW
NVIDIA’s partnership with Activision also extends to the cloud with GeForce NOW, Bartz said. In November, NVIDIA welcomed the first Activation and Blizzard game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Diablo IV And Monitoring 2 are arriving soon.
GeForce NOW will get Day Pass subscription options starting in February. Priority and Ultimate Day Passes will give players a full day of gaming with the fastest access to servers, with all the same member benefits, including NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 and NVIDIA Reflex for Ultimate Day Pass buyers.
NVIDIA also announced the arrival of G-SYNC Cloud technology on GeForce NOW, which varies the display refresh rate to match the frame rate of G-SYNC monitors, giving members the experience smoothest, tear-free gaming experience from the cloud.
Generative AI powers smarter robots with NVIDIA Isaac
Closing the special keynote, Deepu Talla, NVIDIA vice president of Robotics and Edge Computing, discussed how integrating generative AI into robotics accelerates the ability to move robots from proof of concept to deployment in the real world.
Talla provided insight into the growing use of generative AI in the NVIDIA robotics ecosystem, where robotics innovators like Boston Dynamics and Collaborative Robots are changing the landscape of human-robot interaction.
