The AI revolution returned to where it started this week, putting powerful new tools into the hands of gamers and content creators.
Generative AI models that will bring lifelike characters to games and applications and new GPUs for gamers and creators were among the highlights of a news-packed address Monday ahead of this week’s CES trade show in Las Vegas.
“Today, NVIDIA is at the center of the latest technology transformation: generative AI,” said Jeff Fisher, senior vice president for GeForce at NVIDIA, who was joined by leaders across the company to introduce products and partnerships across gaming, content creation, and robotics.
A Launching Pad for Generative AI
As AI shifts into the mainstream, Fisher said NVIDIA’s RTX GPUs, with more than 100 million units shipped, are pivotal in the burgeoning field of generative AI, exemplified by innovations like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion.
In October, NVIDIA released the TensorRT-LLM library for Windows, accelerating large language models, or LLMs, like Llama 2 and Mistral up to 5x on RTX PCs.
And with our new Chat with RTX playground, releasing later this month, enthusiasts can connect an RTX-accelerated LLM to their own data, from locally stored documents to YouTube videos, using retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, a technique for enhancing the accuracy and reliability of generative AI models.
Fisher also introduced TensorRT acceleration for Stable Diffusion XL and SDXL Turbo in the popular Automatic1111 text-to-image app, providing up to a 60% boost in performance.
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 with generative AI. ACE AI models are designed to run in the cloud or locally on the PC.
In an ACE demo featuring Convai’s new technologies, NVIDIA’s Senior Product Manager Seth Schneider showed how it works.
First, a player’s voice input is passed to NVIDIA’s automatic speech recognition model, which translates speech to text. Then, the text is put into 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 rendered into the game scene.
At CES, NVIDIA is announcing ACE Production Microservices for NVIDIA Audio2Face and NVIDIA Riva Automatic Speech Recognition. Available now, each model can be incorporated by developers individually into their pipelines.
NVIDIA is also announcing game and interactive avatar developers are pioneering ways ACE and generative AI technologies can be used to transform interactions between players and non-playable characters in games and applications. Developers embracing ACE include Convai, Charisma.AI, Inworld, miHoYo, NetEase Games, Ourpalm, Tencent, Ubisoft and UneeQ.
Getty Images Releases Generative AI by iStock and AI Image Generation Tools Powered by NVIDIA Picasso
Generative AI empowers designers and marketers to create concept imagery, social media content and more. Today, iStock by Getty Images is releasing a genAI service built on NVIDIA Picasso, an AI foundry for visual design, Fisher announced.
The iStock service allows anyone to create 4K imagery from text using an AI model trained on Getty Images’ extensive catalog of licensed, commercially safe creative content. New editing application programming interfaces that give customers powerful control over their generated images are also coming soon.
The generative AI service is available today at istock.com, with advanced editing features releasing via API.
NVIDIA Introduces GeForce RTX 40 SUPER Series
Fisher announced a new series of GeForce RTX 40 SUPER GPUs with more gaming and generative AI performance.
Fisher said that 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 gen in the most graphically intensive games. With 836 AI TOPS, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation delivers an extra performance boost, making the RTX 4080 SUPER twice as fast as an RTX 3080 Ti.
Creators can generate video with Stable Video Diffusion 1.5x faster and images with Stable Diffusion XL 1.7x faster. The RTX 4080 SUPER features more cores and faster memory, giving it a performance edge at a great new price of $999. It will be available starting Jan. 31.
Next up is the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER. NVIDIA has added more cores and increased the frame buffer to 16GB and the memory bus to 256 bits. It’s 1.6x faster than a 3070 Ti and 2.5x faster with DLSS 3, Fisher said. The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER will be available starting Jan. 24 for $799.
Fisher also introduced the RTX 4070 SUPER. NVIDIA has 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 Jan. 17.
NVIDIA RTX Remix Open Beta Launches This Month
There are over 10 billion game mods downloaded each year. With RTX Remix, modders can remaster classic games with full ray tracing, DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex and generative AI texture tools that transform low-resolution textures into 4K, physically accurate materials. The RTX Remix app will be released in open beta on Jan. 22.
RTX Remix has already delivered stunning remasters in NVIDIA’s Portal with RTX and the modder-made Portal: Prelude RTX. Now, Orbifold Studios is using RTX Remix to develop Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, a community remaster of one of the highest-rated games of all time.
Check out this new Half-Life 2 RTX gameplay trailer:
Twitch and NVIDIA to Release Multi-Encode Livestreaming
Twitch is one of the most popular platforms for content creators, with over 7 million streamers going live each month to 35 million daily viewers. Fisher explained that these viewers are on all kinds of devices and internet services.
Yet many Twitch streamers are limited to broadcasting at a single resolution and quality level. As a result, they must broadcast at lower quality to reach more viewers.
To address this, Twitch, OBS and NVIDIA announced Enhanced Broadcasting, supported by all RTX GPUs. This new feature allows streamers to transmit up to three concurrent streams to Twitch at different resolutions and quality so each viewer gets the optimal experience.
Beta signups start today and will go live later this month. Twitch will also experiment with 4K and AV1 on the GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs to deliver even better quality and higher resolution streaming.
‘New Wave’ of AI-Ready RTX Laptops
RTX is the fastest-growing laptop platform, having grown 5x in the last four years. Over 50 million devices are enjoyed by gamers and creators across the globe.
More’s coming. Fisher announced “a new wave” of RTX laptops launching from every major manufacturer. “Thanks to 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 apps, GeForce RTX is the world’s largest platform for gamers, creators and, now, generative AI.
Activision and Blizzard Games Embrace RTX
More than 500 games and apps now take advantage of NVIDIA RTX technology, NVIDIA’s Senior Consumer Marketing Manager Kristina Bartz said, including Alan Wake 2, which won three awards at this year’s Game Awards.
It’s a list that keeps growing with 14 new RTX titles announced at CES.
Horizon Forbidden West, the critically acclaimed sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, will come to PC early this year with the Burning Shores expansion, accelerated by DLSS 3.
Pax Dei is a social sandbox massively multiplayer online game inspired by the legends of the medieval era. 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 Blizzard’s fastest-selling game. RTX ray tracing will now be coming to Diablo IV in March.
Day Passes and G-SYNC Technology Coming 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 Overwatch 2 are coming soon.
GeForce NOW will get Day Pass membership options starting in February. Priority and Ultimate Day Passes will give gamers a full day of gaming with the fastest access to servers, with all the same benefits as members, including NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 and NVIDIA Reflex for Ultimate Day Pass purchasers.
NVIDIA also announced Cloud G-SYNC technology is coming to GeForce NOW, which varies the display refresh rate to match the frame rate on G-SYNC monitors, giving members the smoothest, tear-free gaming experience from the cloud.
Generative AI Powers Smarter Robots With NVIDIA Isaac
Closing out the special address, NVIDIA Vice President of Robotics and Edge Computing Deepu Talla shared how the infusion of generative AI into robotics is speeding up the ability to bring robots from proof of concept to real-world deployment.
Talla gave a peek 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.