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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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Meta was late to the AI party – and now it’ll never beat ChatGPT
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Meta – the tech titan formerly known as Facebook – desperately wants to take pole position at the forefront of AI research, but things aren’t exactly going to plan.

As reported by Gizmochina, Meta lost a third of its AI research staff in 2022, many of whom cited burnout or lack of faith in the company’s leadership as their reasons for departing. An internal survey from earlier this year showed that just 26% of employees expressed confidence in Meta’s direction as a business.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg hired French computer scientist and roboticist Yann LeCun to lead Meta’s AI efforts back in 2013, but in more recent times Meta has visibly struggled to keep up with the rapid pace of AI expansion demonstrated by competing platforms like ChatGPT and Google Bard. LeCun was notably not among the invitees to the White House’s recent Companies at the Frontier of Artificial Intelligence Innovation summit.

That’s not to say that Meta is failing completely in the AI sphere; recent reveals like a powerful AI music creator and a speech-generation tool too dangerous to release to the public show that the Facebook owner isn’t exactly sitting on its hands when it comes to AI development. So why is it still lagging behind?

Abstract artwork promoting Meta's new Voicebox AI.

Meta’s AI ‘Voicebox’ tool is almost terrifyingly powerful – so terrifying, in fact, that Meta isn’t releasing it to the public (Image credit: Meta)

Change of direction

The clue’s in the name: remember back in 2021, when the then-ubiquitous Facebook underwent a total rebrand to become ‘Meta’? At the time, it was supposed to herald a new era of technology, led by our reptilian overlord Zuckerberg. Enter the metaverse, he said, where your wildest dreams can come true.

Two years down the line, it’s become pretty clear that his Ready Player Zuck fantasies aren’t going to materialize; at least, not for quite a while. AI, on the other hand, really is the new technology frontier – but Meta’s previous obsession with the metaverse has left it on the back foot in the AI gold rush.

Even though Meta has now shifted to AI as its prime area of investment and has maintained an AI research department for years, it’s fair to say that the Facebook owner failed to capitalize on the AI boom late last year. According to Gizmochina, employees have been urging management to shift focus back towards generative AI, which fell by the wayside in favor of the company’s metaverse push.

Meta commentary

A female-presenting person works at her desk in Meta's Horizons VR

Meta’s virtual Horizon workspace was never going to take off, let’s be honest (Image credit: Meta)

Perhaps Meta is simply spread too thin. Back in February, Zuckerberg described 2023 as the company’s “year of efficiency” – a thin cover for Meta’s mass layoffs and project closures back in November 2022, which have seen internal morale fall to an all-time low. Meta is still trying to push ahead in the VR market with products like the Meta Quest Pro, and recently announced it would be releasing a Twitter rival, supposedly called ‘Threads’.

In any case, it seems that Meta might have simply missed the boat. ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing AI are already making huge waves in the wider public sphere, along with the best AI art generators such as Midjourney.

It’s hard to see where Meta’s AI projects will fit in the current lineup; perhaps Zuckerberg should just stick to social media instead. Or maybe we'll see Meta pull another hasty name-change to become 'MetAI' or something equally ridiculous. The possibilities are endless!

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Microsoft 365 is seriously late to the party with this important hybrid working feature
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Avoiding embarrassing meeting snafus could soon be a lot easier thanks to a long-awaited new update from Microsoft 365.

The software suite has revealed that users will finally be able to specify where and how they will be attending meetings using its Outlook email service.

Going forward, Outlook users will now be able to specify whether they will attend a meeting in-person or online.

Outlook RSVP

Microsoft says this feature will be useful not just for the workers, but also for those planning meetings, who can best prepare by booking a room with video conferencing resources or bringing an external speaker.

The update was first revealed back in September 2021 as part of a larger hybrid working push by Microsoft, but the company has now said the tool is finally set to begin rolling out soon. It is marked as general availability, meaning all Outlook and Exchange users should be able to access it upon release.

The update comes a number of weeks after Google announced an identical feature for Gmail, as Google Calendar users are now able to specify whether they will be attending a meeting either virtually or in-person in their email RSVP.

The function had initially been added to Google Calendar back in July 2021 during the initial hybrid working peak, with Google noting this would, “help meeting attendees know what to expect when joining a meeting, and prepare accordingly.”

Ironically given today's news, Google's RSVP options are not shared with contacts on other platforms, such as Microsoft Outlook.

Google Calendar also recently launched a “Focus time” feature that allows users to block out periods of time where they can avoid meetings and get their heads down for actual work.

Setting such a marker in your Google Calendar will also allow users to automatically decline meetings, meaning no last-minute rush to finish off work.

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