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Nvidia’s new G-Assist AI could just be the best party member for hardcore PC gamers
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What started as an April Fool’s prank from 2017 might actually become real tech. During Computex 2024, Nvidia revealed a tech demo for Project G-Assist, an AI assistant that can enhance how people play video games. 

The old joke was that the AI could play games for you with the push of a button. This new version isn’t as capable as its fantasy counterpart, but can still help you with your playthrough. According to the announcement post, G-Assist can answer questions about how to complete quests, find items, or help with how to beat tough bosses. 

To activate the AI, you'll simply press a hotkey or utter a wake phase. A window will appear on the screen. From there, you can type in a text prompt or speak it via microphone.

Nvidia states that G-Assist is contextually aware. Through visual models, it can provide recommendations on what a player should do next just by looking at the screen. It may suggest crafting a certain gear for your character or avoiding an on-screen enemy. The information it’ll provide depends on what you’re playing. For role-playing games, it can tell you about the lore of the surrounding world. If you’re playing a first-person shooter, G-Assist will recommend the best loadouts.

Nvidia G-Assist on PC

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Granted, all the AI's tidbits can be admittedly found through a simple Google search. It’s not like G-Assist has access to a secret treasure trove of knowledge. The main draw here is you don’t have to leave your game. A ton of important data is all a button press away. 

The source of a game’s information has us curious. Nvidia says each output will provide “context-sensitive links,” directing you to extra resources online, such as official community wikis. Whether or not that’ll include unofficial sources, like YouTube videos, remains to be seen.

Computer tune up

Besides the playthrough helper, the assistant also has a feature we think hardcore gamers will appreciate called Performance Tuning. Activating this allows the AI to “evaluate your system’s configuration… and instantly tune it for an optimal experience.” It could, for example, decide to undervolt a graphics card to increase power efficiency, enable a “safe GPU overclock,” and turn on Nvidia Reflex to reduce latency, among other things.

Nvidia G-Assist - Performance Tuning feature

(Image credit: Nvidia)

G-Assist even tracks your computer’s performance as you play, letting you know about key statistics, from a game's current frame rate to latency spikes. The corner window displays a graphical readout of a certain stat within a certain time frame. It depends on what you ask the assistant.

What’s more, the AI suggests actions you can take to improve a computer's overall performance or explain certain features. For instance, DLAA (deep-learning anti-aliasing) and DLSS (deep-learning super sampling) are a pair of graphical software that Nvidia made to improve a video game's visual fidelity. The average person may have a difficult time understanding the differences between them and what exactly they do. G-Assist can help down break tricky concepts to better educate people.

The AI is shaping itself up to be yet another killer app from Nvidia. It’s definitely something we want to try out ourselves on our favorite titles. At time of this writing, G-Assist is being exhibited at Computex. It’s unknown if and when it’ll launch or if there will be beta at some point.

TechRadar did reach out to Nvidia asking if it plans to release a public beta and if it’ll expand to non-gaming apps soon. We’ll update this story if we hear back.

Be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best gaming PCs for 2024 if you're in the market.

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Could generative AI work without online data theft? Nvidia’s ChatRTX aims to prove it can
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Nvidia continues to invest in AI initiatives and the most recent one, ChatRTX, is no exception thanks to its most recent update. 

ChatRTX is, according to the tech giant, a “demo app that lets you personalize a GPT large language model (LLM) connected to your own content.” This content comprises your PC’s local documents, files, folders, etc., and essentially builds a custom AI chatbox from that information.

Because it doesn’t require an internet connection, it gives users speedy access to query answers that might be buried under all those computer files. With the latest update, it has access to even more data and LLMs including Google Gemma and ChatGLM3, an open, bilingual (English and Chinese) LLM. It also can locally search for photos, and has Whisper support, allowing users to converse with ChatRTX through an AI-automated speech recognition program.

Nvidia uses TensorRT-LLM software and RTX graphics cards to power ChatRTX’s AI. And because it’s local, it’s far more secure than online AI chatbots. You can download ChatRTX here to try it out for free.

Can AI escape its ethical dilemma?

The concept of an AI chatbot using local data off your PC, instead of training on (read: stealing) other people’s online works, is rather intriguing. It seems to solve the ethical dilemma of using copyrighted works without permission and hoarding it. It also seems to solve another long-term problem that’s plagued many a PC user — actually finding long-buried files in your file explorer, or at least the information trapped within it.

However, there’s the obvious question of how the extremely limited data pool could negatively impact the chatbot. Unless the user is particularly skilled at training AI, it could end up becoming a serious issue in the future. Of course, only using it to locate information on your PC is perfectly fine and most likely the proper use. 

But the point of an AI chatbot is to have unique and meaningful conversations. Maybe there was a time in which we could have done that without the rampant theft, but corporations have powered their AI with stolen words from other sites and now it’s irrevocably tied.

Given that it's highly unethical that data theft is the vital part of the process that allows you to make chats well-rounded enough not to get trapped in feedback loops, it’s possible that Nvidia could be the middle ground for generative AI. If fully developed, it could prove that we don’t need the ethical transgression to power and shape them, so here's to hoping Nvidia can get it right.

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Nvidia’s GeForce Now’s free tier will soon show you up to two minutes of ads while you wait to play – proving nowhere is safe from commercials
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Nvidia’s free tier of GeForce Now, its cloud gaming service, will soon run up to two minutes of ads before you play, according to Nvidia spokesperson Stephanie Ngo.

GeForce Now is a service offered by Nvidia that allows you to connect to digital PC game stores and stream games you already own across a multitude of different devices – including Macs, Windows laptops, iPhones and iPads, Android phones, and more.

It offers three membership tiers, with the free membership offering a queue system with an hour-long gaming session length that will then bring you back to the start of the queue once your time is up. It’s in this waiting time that the ads will be shown, so while it could be a little annoying, your actual gameplay time won’t be interrupted. 

The ads will help pay for the free tier service and keep it free, with Ngo adding that the change is also expected to reduce wait times for free users in the long run – though it’s not entirely clear at this point how that’s going to work. Perhaps Nvidia is expecting the arrival of ads to push users to pay for the premium tiers or simply drive some users away from the platform entirely – either would, in theory, help reduce queues for the free tier.  GeForce Now users should expect an email on 27 Feb to let them know about the changes. 

 Major inconvenience or just … meh?  

I’m not a user of Nvidia’s game-streaming service myself, but I reached out to GeForce Now Members within the TechRadar team and learned that wait times currently fluctuate between five to fifteen minutes – and scrolling through the GeForce Now subreddit proves that wait times can go on even longer. 

Most people who use the free tier of GeForce Now go in aware that they will be spending a not-insignificant amount of time in a queue, so in reality, two minutes of ads when you know you’re likely going to be waiting for longer anyway isn’t much of an inconvenience – it might even help kill some time. Many users are likely to simply do something else while queuing for their free hour timeslot anyway, so why shouldn’t Nvidia get some extra ad revenue from it?

That being said, it is a gloomy example of the inescapable modern torture of being advertised at non-stop. Almost every facet of the internet is packed with ads at this point (this article included – sorry about that, but we’ve got to eat!) and while a lot of platforms offer ad-free paid tiers, it seems like that isn’t enough anymore. 

Amazon Prime has received a lot of (well-deserved) flak for slapping ads onto paid memberships, and Netflix’s ad-supported free tier wasn’t very well-received either. While Nvidia’s latest move seems fairly innocuous right now, who’s to say the ‘up to two minutes’ won’t extend further in the future, until you’re sat watching a full ten minutes of commercials to play an hour-long session of your current favorite game? Do you just give in and buy a paid membership? I just might, personally – but I wouldn’t be happy about it.

Via The Verge 

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Nvidia’s new app will let you run an AI chatbot on your RTX-powered PC
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Nvidia is offering users the opportunity to try out their new AI chatbot that runs natively on your PC called Chat with RTX.

Well, it’s not a chatbot in the traditional sense like ChatGPT. It’s more of an AI summarizer as Chat with RTX doesn’t come with its own knowledge base. The data it references has to come from documents that you provide. According to the company, their software supports multiple file formats including .txt, .pdf, .doc, and .xml. The way it works is you upload a single file or an entire folder onto Chat with RTX’s library. You then ask questions relating to the uploaded content or have it sum up the text into a bize-sized paragraph. 

As TheVerge points out, the tool can help professionals analyze lengthy documents. And because it runs locally on your PC, you can ask Chat with RTX to process sensitive data without worrying about any potential leaks.

The software can also summarize YouTube videos. To do this, you’ll need to first change the dataset from Folder Path to YouTube URL then paste said URL of the clip into Chat with RTX. It’ll then transcribe the entire video for the app to use as its knowledge base. URLs for YouTube playlists can be pasted as well. You can also list out how many videos are in the playlist. Regardless, the software will transcribe everything as normal.

Rough around the edges

Keep in mind Chat with RTX is far from perfect. As TheVerge puts it, “the app is a little rough around the edges”. 

It’s reportedly pretty good at summarizing documents since it had “no problem pulling out all the key information.” However, it falters with YouTube videos. The publication uploaded one of their clips for Chat with RTX to transcribe. After looking through the summary, they discovered it was for a completely different video. Additionally, it doesn’t understand context. If you ask a follow-up question “based on the context of a previous question,” the AI won’t know what you’re talking about. Each prompt must be treated as a completely new one.

Requirements

The demo is free for everyone to try out, although your computer must meet certain requirements. It needs to have a GeForce RTX 30 Series or higher graphics card running on the latest Nvidia drivers, at least 8GB of VRAM, and Windows 10 or Windows 11 on board. 

TheVerge claims it took about 30 minutes for Chat with RTX to finish installing on their PC which housed an Intel Core i9-14900K CPU and a GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. So even if you have a powerful machine, it’ll still take a while. The file size for the app is nearly 40GB and will eat up around 3GB of RAM when activated.

We reached out to Nvidia asking if there are plans to expand support to RTX 20 Series graphics cards and when the final version will launch (assuming there is one). This story will be updated at a later time. 

Until then, check out TechRadar's list of the best graphics cards for 2024.

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Nvidia’s latest AI model could revolutionize games development
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AI could be about to make 3D modeling in a whole lot quicker and easier, if Nvidia has its way. 

Fresh from the company’s research lab, Neuralangelo is an AI model that transforms 2D video clips into “extremely high fidelity” 3D structures. 

“Creative professionals can then import these 3D objects into design applications, editing them further for use in art, video game development, robotics, and industrial digital twins,” the company explained in its latest paper.

Real-world high-fidelity 

Using videos as reference points is hardly anything new – even when you do throw relatively new and experimental AI into the mix. But, as Nvidia notes in its latest paper, “current methods struggle to recover detailed structures of real-world scenes.” In other words, they can replicate objects and scenes, but it won't feel lifelike. 

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And it’s that high fidelity Neuralangelo is promising to deliver. According to Nvidia Research, the minds behind the model, it's able to vividly recreate the textures of different materials, like glass, marble, and even roof shingling. The model has also proved capable of reconstructing building interiors and exteriors.

“The 3D reconstruction capabilities Neuralangelo offers will be a huge benefit to creators, helping them recreate the real world in the digital world,” said Ming-Yu Liu, senior director of research and one of the paper's co-authors.

Neuralangelo’s applications in art and games development are already clear: think of the vast cityscapes of Grand Theft Auto, the real-world historical setting of Assassin’s Creed. Whole virtual towns could soon be realized based on videos recorded on a smartphone. But it’s only a matter of time before AI models like these also form a core part of all the best architecture software and best landscape design software, if it really can streamline real-life reconstructions.

In a demo released by the company, results were admittedly impressive: highly detailed AI renderings of Michelangelo's David based on video footage that lived up to boasts of “detailed large-scale scene reconstruction from RGB video.” But we're still a way off from dropping AI 3D models straight into projects without requiring some finishing touches.

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