Posts in category: nVidia AI

The 96th Academy Awards nominees for Best Visual Effects are a testament to the incredible technological advancements pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in film.

Whether showcasing colossal destruction scenes, heart-pumping action sequences or interstellar adventures, each nominee demonstrates unique contributions in visual effects, or VFX — and they all used cutting-edge NVIDIA technologies in their workflows to bring their magic to the screen.

This year’s nominees include:

• The Creator (20th Century Studios) — Jay Cooper, Ian Comley, Andrew Roberts and Neil Corbould
• Godzilla: Minus One (Toho) — Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Marvel Studios) — Stephane Ceretti, Alexis Wajsbrot, Guy Williams and Theo Bialek
• Napoleon (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures) — Charley Henley, Luc-Ewen Martin-Fenouillet, Simone Coco and Neil Corbould
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Paramount Pictures) — Alex Wuttke, Simone Coco, Jeff Sutherland and Neil Corbould

Reinventing the Monster Movie

Godzilla: Minus One presented a unique challenge: making a well-known giant monster, or kaijū, feel terrifying anew.

With a budget under $15 million, small by today’s standards, the film’s VFX team relied on rapid iterations with the director to eliminate long review cycles, along with a heavily detailed computer-generated imagery (CGI) model to bring Godzilla to life.

Godzilla was ready for its closeup, the monster’s head alone containing over 200 million polygons. The animators injected nuanced, lifelike behaviors into the creature to round out its performance.

In addition, the film’s destruction scenes used a sophisticated, memory-intensive physics engine, allowing for realistic simulations of crumbling buildings and landscapes under destruction to further immerse audiences in the chaos.

A Cosmic Spectacle

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 continued the series’s tradition of blending humor with breathtaking cosmic visuals. This installment pushed the envelope with its use of real-time rendering, enabling its artists to visualize complex space environments and characters on set.

The film brought together Wētā FX, Framestore and Sony Pictures Imageworks, among others, to create a whopping 3,000+ VFX shots. The dense, immersive 3D environments allowed for a seamless integration of live-action and CGI elements and characters, resulting in a visually stunning space opera that maintained the series’ signature style while exploring new visual territories.

One of Guardians’s greatest achievements is the hallway fight scene filmed at 120 frames per second and delivered as a single continuous shot with variable speed ramps and nonstop action.

Epic Storytelling Through Detailed VFX

The historical epic Napoleon was brought to life with meticulous attention to detail and scale. The film used various set extensions and practical effects to recreate the vast battlefields and period-specific architecture of early 19th-century Europe.

Advanced crowd simulation was used to depict the massive armies of Napoleon’s time, each soldier animated with individual behaviors to enhance the battle scenes’ realism. These touches, combined with high-resolution textures and dynamic lighting, created a visually compelling narrative grounded in reality.

Exploring AI’s Boundaries

The Creator explored the themes of AI and virtual reality, requiring VFX that could realistically depict advanced technology and digital worlds.

The film made significant use of CG animation and visual effects to create environments both futuristic and plausible. Director Gareth Edwards, also known for Rogue One and Godzilla (2014), has been widely applauded for delivering a film with the look of an expensive summer blockbuster using a fraction of the typical budget.

The portrayal of AI entities involved a combination of motion-capture and procedural animation to create characters that moved and interacted with complexity and fluidity at human level. The VFX team developed custom software to simulate the intricate patterns of digital consciousness, blurring the lines between the virtual and the real.

High-Octane Action Meets Precision VFX

For Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the visual effects team faced the challenge of enhancing the film’s signature action sequences without detracting from the series’s reputation for practical stunts. To achieve this, they took a hybrid approach, using CGI to seamlessly augment practical effects.

High-speed drone footage integrated with CG elements created breathtaking chase scenes, while advanced compositing techniques added layers of detail and depth to explosions and hand-to-hand combat scenes, elevating the film’s action to new heights.

NVIDIANs at the SciTech Awards

The Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical Achievements highlight technical contributions that have significantly affected the way movies are made, as well as the brilliant inventors behind them.

OpenUSD was honored in the science and engineering subcategory for its importance as the first open-source scene description framework that streamlines the entire production workflow. Its innovative layering system and efficient crate file format have established it as the de facto standard for 3D scene interchange, facilitating unparalleled collaboration across the industry. 

The science and engineering subcategory also celebrated other remarkable technologies, including the OpenVDB open-source library, for sparse 3D volumes, which has become an industry standard for visual-effects simulations and renderings of water, fire, smoke and clouds.

Initially created in 2009 by Ken Museth, senior director of physics research at NVIDIA, OpenVDB has been further developed by Museth, Peter Cucka and Mihai Aldén. Learn more about the latest advancements in OpenVDB including NanoVDB and NeuralVDB.

In addition, the Alembic Caching and Interchange system, developed by Lucas Miller, NVIDIA’s Christopher Jon Horvath, Steve LaVietes and Joe Ardent, received recognition for its efficient algorithms in storing and retrieving baked, time-sampled data, facilitating high-efficiency caching and scene sharing across the digital production pipeline.

OpenVDB and Alembic are both interoperable with OpenUSD, enhancing their utility and integration within the industry’s production workflows.

See How Oscar-Nominated VFX Are Created at GTC

Learn more about visual effects, AI, virtual production and animation at NVIDIA GTC, a global AI conference taking place March 18-21 at the San Jose Convention Center and online. Register to hear from industry luminaries creating stunning visuals in film and TV.

Academy Award-winner Ken Museth will present a session, Open-Source Software for Visual Effects: OpenUSD and OpenVDB, on Monday, March 18, at 9 a.m. PT.

And join us for OpenUSD Day to learn how to build generative AI-enabled 3D pipelines and tools using Universal Scene Description. Browse the full list of media and entertainment sessions at GTC.

Featured image courtesy of Toho Co., Ltd. TOHO CO., LTD.

Bringing together pioneers in robotics and AI, NVIDIA GTC will be a state-of-the-art showcase of applied AI for autonomous machines.

The conference, running March 18-21 at the San Jose Convention Center and online, boasts a star-studded lineup. This includes a fireside chat with Marc Raibert, executive director of The AI Institute, and Dieter Fox, senior director of robotics research at NVIDIA, as well as panels featuring heavyweights like Disney, Google DeepMind and Amazon, alongside insights from NVIDIA stalwarts like Senior Research Scientist Jim Fan.

With over 77 ecosystem partners and more than 25 partner robots, from industrial giants to entertainment bots, GTC is where the future of robotics unfolds.

Attendees will be able to explore the convergence of AI and robotics through dynamic displays in the AI at the Edge pavilion, the Metropolis pavilion and demo areas, featuring the latest robot arms, robotic vision systems and high-accuracy 3D scanning systems.

These demonstrations provide compelling examples of how AI seamlessly enhances human capabilities across diverse industries. Groundbreaking demos using large language models for real-world applications will push the boundaries of human-machine interaction.

Here are a few of the conference’s must-see robotics events:

• AI’s Impact on Robotics: In a fireside chat, Raibert and Fox discuss AI’s transformative role in robotics, moving from traditional controls to AI-driven technologies.
• Generative AI in Robotics: A panel led by NVIDIA Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager Sandra Skaff and featuring leaders from Ambi Robotics, Covariant, Vayu Robotics and Scaled Foundations discusses the impact of generative AI in robotics, focusing on its potential to advance reasoning, planning and perception.
• Generative AI Revolution: Google DeepMind unveils the next frontier in robotics, powered by generative AI’s advancements in perception and interaction, in the session “Robotics in the Age of Generative AI.”
• Metaverse Meets Automation: SICK AG offers a vision of the metaverse revolutionizing the automation industry, in the session “Exploring Tomorrow’s Industrial Automation.”
• Robots and AI Vision: The session “Empowering Collaborative Robots: The Future of AI Vision With Digital Twins” shows how AI vision is setting new standards for robot-human collaboration.
• Robots With Character: Walt Disney Imagineering will show how it’s enabling the rapid design of legged robotic characters that learn to imitate artist-specified animations, in the session “Breathing Life Into Disney’s Robotic Characters With Deep Reinforcement Learning.”
• Boosting Humanoid Performance: Sanctuary AI explores the role of synthetic data in enhancing humanoid robot performance for complex tasks, in the session “Using Omniverse to Generate First-Person Experiential Data for Humanoid Robots.”

Plus, a special session with Deepu Talla, vice president of robotics and edge computing, about “AI Robotics: Driving Innovation for the Future of Automation” was just added to the GTC catalog.

This year’s GTC also offers 40 hands-on labs, providing attendees with an immersive experience of the practical applications of these technologies.

A Jetson and Robotics Developer Day will be held on Thursday, March 21, featuring a full day of sessions and panels that dive deep into building next-gen AI-powered robotics and edge applications on the NVIDIA Jetson, Isaac and Metropolis platforms.

Over the past decade, GTC has been where advances in computer graphics, deep learning and generative AI were launched. As industries from agriculture to manufacturing are transformed by these technologies, this year’s event will offer a glimpse into the innovations that will soon define our daily lives.

Register for GTC to secure your spot at the forefront of technology’s next leap. 

The Geneva International Motor Show, one of the most important and long-standing global auto exhibitions, opened this week, with the spotlight on several China and U.S. EV makers building on NVIDIA DRIVE that are expanding their presence in Europe.

BYD

One of the key reveals is BYD’s Yangweng U8 plug-in hybrid large SUV, built on the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin platform. It features an electric drivetrain with a range of up to 1,000 kilometers, or 621 miles, thanks to its 49 kilowatt-hour battery and range-extender gasoline engine.

IM Motors

The premium EV brand by SAIC and Alibaba, IM Motors, unveiled its IM L6 mid-size electric  saloon (aka sedan), which will soon be available to the European market.

The L6 features IM’s proprietary Intelligent Mobility Autonomous Driving System, powered by NVIDIA DRIVE Orin. The advanced system uses a comprehensive sensor suite, including one lidar, three radars, 11 cameras and 12 ultrasonic sensors. IM reports that the L6 is capable of highway navigation on autopilot, marking a milestone in the company’s mission to bring advanced self-driving vehicles to market.

IM Motors has been working with NVIDIA since 2021, using NVIDIA DRIVE Orin as the AI brain for its flagship LS7 SUV and L7 sedan.

Lucid 

The Geneva Motor Show marks the European debut of Lucid’s Gravity SUV.

The Gravity aims to set fresh benchmarks for sustainability and technological innovation when its production commences in late 2024. Powered by NVIDIA DRIVE, the luxury SUV features supercar levels of performance and an impressive battery range to mitigate range anxiety.

Explore the latest developments in mobility and meet NVIDIA DRIVE ecosystem partners showcasing their next-gen vehicles at GTC, the conference for the era of AI, running from March 18-21 at the San Jose Convention Center and online.

Find additional details on automotive-specific programming at GTC.

For some NVIDIANs, it’s always game day.

Our Santa Clara-based software quality assurance team boasts some of the world’s top gamers, whose search for bugs and errors is as strategic as their battle plans for toppling top-tier opponents in video games.

Two team members of the QA team — friendly colleagues in the office but fierce rivals in the esports arena — recently competed against one another at the finals of the Guildhouse Fighters tournament, a local circuit in Northern California.

Eduardo “PR Balrog” Perez-Frangie, a veteran Street Fighter player, fought his way to the Grand Final to face Miky “Samurai” Chea.

Perez-Frangie came out on top, but there was a twist: he’d brought to the contest his two-year-old son, who fell asleep on his father’s chest mid-match. “I played the rest of the game with a deadweight in my lap,” he said.

A Competitive Spirit

Perez-Frangie has competed for 15 years in a series of fighting game titles, including Marvel vs. Capcom, Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat. He was part of the Evil Geniuses esports organization when he joined NVIDIA almost a decade ago but now plays without a sponsor so he can enjoy more family time.

He’s played against Chea in esports events for years, and they’re just as competitive in the office as in the stadiums.

“Even when we’re in the test environment, when we’re looking for bugs, we are competitive,” Perez-Frangie said. “But Miky stays calm — he was a teacher, so he can put everyone in their place.”

Chea’s days teaching kindergarten through eighth grade in Fresno, California, are behind him, but the coaching aspect of his current gaming-related role reminds him of the classroom — a place to share insights and takeaways.

As new games are released and older ones updated, “the hardware and software stack needs to work in harmony,” Chea said. “Our pro gaming team is the last line of defense to ensure our customers have the best gaming experience possible.”

QA team member DaJuan “Shroomed” McDaniel is a top-ranked Super Smash Bros. Melee player whose signature characters are Sheik and Marth. He’s also widely considered to be the best Dr. Mario player of all time.

“Being a competitive gamer, visual fidelity is so important,” McDaniel said. “We can see and feel visual anomalies, frame discrepancies, general latency and anything that’s off in ways that others won’t see.”

A Winning Formula

Alyssa Ruiz joined the QA team a year ago, initially testing drivers as part of the pro gaming team before switching to testing NVIDIA DLSS, a suite of neural rendering techniques that use deep learning to improve image quality and performance.

Introduced to gaming by her brothers through Halo 3, she later dedicated hours to Fortnite before deciding to stream the gameplay directly from her console. She posted the content to TikTok and began playing in online tournaments. By then, her game of choice was Riot Games’ Valorant.

“The game has a large female player base with visually appealing graphics and an engrossing storyline,” she said. “It can be more complex than a fighting game because it relies on a combination of abilities with strategies. It’s also a team game, so if someone isn’t pulling their weight, it’s a loss for all of us.”

That’s not unlike the team dynamic in the office.

Each member brings their own specialties to the testing environment, where they’re using their keen eyes to scrutinize DLSS technologies.

Their acute awareness of game latency and image fidelity — honed through hundreds of hours of gameplay — means the team can achieve better test coverage all around.

“We’re all very competitive, but there’s a real diversity that contributes to a stronger team,” Ruiz said. “And we all get along really well.”

Learn more about NVIDIA life, culture and careers. 

Artificial intelligence, like any transformative technology, is a work in progress — continually growing in its capabilities and its societal impact. Trustworthy AI initiatives recognize the real-world effects that AI can have on people and society, and aim to channel that power responsibly for positive change.

What Is Trustworthy AI?

Trustworthy AI is an approach to AI development that prioritizes safety and transparency for those who interact with it. Developers of trustworthy AI understand that no model is perfect, and take steps to help customers and the general public understand how the technology was built, its intended use cases and its limitations.

In addition to complying with privacy and consumer protection laws, trustworthy AI models are tested for safety, security and mitigation of unwanted bias. They’re also transparent — providing information such as accuracy benchmarks or a description of the training dataset — to various audiences including regulatory authorities, developers and consumers.

Principles of Trustworthy AI

Trustworthy AI principles are foundational to NVIDIA’s end-to-end AI development. They have a simple goal: to enable trust and transparency in AI and support the work of partners, customers and developers.

Privacy: Complying With Regulations, Safeguarding Data

AI is often described as data hungry. Often, the more data an algorithm is trained on, the more accurate its predictions.

But data has to come from somewhere. To develop trustworthy AI, it’s key to consider not just what data is legally available to use, but what data is socially responsible to use.

Developers of AI models that rely on data such as a person’s image, voice, artistic work or health records should evaluate whether individuals have provided appropriate consent for their personal information to be used in this way.

For institutions like hospitals and banks, building AI models means balancing the responsibility of keeping patient or customer data private while training a robust algorithm. NVIDIA has created technology that enables federated learning, where researchers develop AI models trained on data from multiple institutions without confidential information leaving a company’s private servers.

NVIDIA DGX systems and NVIDIA FLARE software have enabled several federated learning projects in healthcare and financial services, facilitating secure collaboration by multiple data providers on more accurate, generalizable AI models for medical image analysis and fraud detection.

Safety and Security: Avoiding Unintended Harm, Malicious Threats

Once deployed, AI systems have real-world impact, so it’s essential they perform as intended to preserve user safety.

The freedom to use publicly available AI algorithms creates immense possibilities for positive applications, but also means the technology can be used for unintended purposes.

To help mitigate risks, NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails keeps AI language models on track by allowing enterprise developers to set boundaries for their applications. Topical guardrails ensure that chatbots stick to specific subjects. Safety guardrails set limits on the language and data sources the apps use in their responses. Security guardrails seek to prevent malicious use of a large language model that’s connected to third-party applications or application programming interfaces.

NVIDIA Research is working with the DARPA-run SemaFor program to help digital forensics experts identify AI-generated images. Last year, researchers published a novel method for addressing social bias using ChatGPT. They’re also creating methods for avatar fingerprinting — a way to detect if someone is using an AI-animated likeness of another individual without their consent.

To protect data and AI applications from security threats, NVIDIA H100 and H200 Tensor Core GPUs are built with confidential computing, which ensures sensitive data is protected while in use, whether deployed on premises, in the cloud or at the edge. NVIDIA Confidential Computing uses hardware-based security methods to ensure unauthorized entities can’t view or modify data or applications while they’re running — traditionally a time when data is left vulnerable.

Transparency: Making AI Explainable

To create a trustworthy AI model, the algorithm can’t be a black box — its creators, users and stakeholders must be able to understand how the AI works to trust its results.

Transparency in AI is a set of best practices, tools and design principles that helps users and other stakeholders understand how an AI model was trained and how it works. Explainable AI, or XAI, is a subset of transparency covering tools that inform stakeholders how an AI model makes certain predictions and decisions.

Transparency and XAI are crucial to establishing trust in AI systems, but there’s no universal solution to fit every kind of AI model and stakeholder. Finding the right solution involves a systematic approach to identify who the AI affects, analyze the associated risks and implement effective mechanisms to provide information about the AI system.

Retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, is a technique that advances AI transparency by connecting generative AI services to authoritative external databases, enabling models to cite their sources and provide more accurate answers. NVIDIA is helping developers get started with a RAG workflow that uses the NVIDIA NeMo framework for developing and customizing generative AI models.

NVIDIA is also part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium, or AISIC, to help create tools and standards for responsible AI development and deployment. As a consortium member, NVIDIA will promote trustworthy AI by leveraging best practices for implementing AI model transparency.

And on NVIDIA’s hub for accelerated software, NGC, model cards offer detailed information about how each AI model works and was built. NVIDIA’s Model Card ++ format describes the datasets, training methods and performance measures used, licensing information, as well as specific ethical considerations.

Nondiscrimination: Minimizing Bias

AI models are trained by humans, often using data that is limited by size, scope and diversity. To ensure that all people and communities have the opportunity to benefit from this technology, it’s important to reduce unwanted bias in AI systems.

Beyond following government guidelines and antidiscrimination laws, trustworthy AI developers mitigate potential unwanted bias by looking for clues and patterns that suggest an algorithm is discriminatory, or involves the inappropriate use of certain characteristics. Racial and gender bias in data are well-known, but other considerations include cultural bias and bias introduced during data labeling. To reduce unwanted bias, developers might incorporate different variables into their models.

Synthetic datasets offer one solution to reduce unwanted bias in training data used to develop AI for autonomous vehicles and robotics. If data used to train self-driving cars underrepresents uncommon scenes such as extreme weather conditions or traffic accidents, synthetic data can help augment the diversity of these datasets to better represent the real world, helping improve AI accuracy.

NVIDIA Omniverse Replicator, a framework built on the NVIDIA Omniverse platform for creating and operating 3D pipelines and virtual worlds, helps developers set up custom pipelines for synthetic data generation. And by integrating the NVIDIA TAO Toolkit for transfer learning with Innotescus, a web platform for curating unbiased datasets for computer vision, developers can better understand dataset patterns and biases to help address statistical imbalances.

Learn more about trustworthy AI on NVIDIA.com and the NVIDIA Blog. For more on tackling unwanted bias in AI, watch this talk from NVIDIA GTC and attend the trustworthy AI track at the upcoming conference, taking place March 18-21 in San Jose, Calif, and online.

Interest in new AI applications reached a fever pitch last year as business leaders began exploring AI pilot programs. This year, they’re focused on strategically implementing these programs to create new value and sharpen their competitive advantage.

GTC, NVIDIA’s conference on AI and accelerated computing, set for March 18-21 at the San Jose Convention Center, will feature leaders across a broad swath of industries discussing how they’re charting the path to AI-driven innovation.

Execs from Bentley Systems, Lowe’s, Siemens and Verizon are among those sharing their companies’ AI journeys.

Don’t miss NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s GTC keynote on Monday, March 18, at 1 p.m. PT.

AI Takes Center Stage in Enterprise Technology Priorities

Nearly three-quarters of C-suite executives plan to increase their company’s tech investments this year, according to a BCG survey of C-suite executives, and 89% rank AI and generative AI among their top three priorities. More than half expect AI to deliver cost savings, primarily through productivity gains, improved customer service and IT efficiencies.

However, challenges to driving value with AI remain, including reskilling workers, prioritizing the right AI use cases and developing a strategy to implement responsible AI.

Join us in person or online to learn how industry leaders are overcoming these challenges to thrive with AI.

Here’s a preview of top industry sessions:

Financial Services

Navigating the Opportunity for Generative AI in Financial Services, featuring speakers from NVIDIA, MasterCard, Capital One and Goldman Sachs.

Enterprise AI in Banking: How One Leader Is Investing in “AI First,” featuring Alexandra V. Mousavizadeh, CEO of Evident, and Chintan Mehta, chief information officer and head of digital technology and innovation at Wells Fargo.

How PayPal Reduced Cloud Costs by up to 70% With Spark RAPIDS, featuring Illay Chen, software engineer at PayPal.

Public Sector

Generative AI Adoption and Operational Challenges in Government, featuring speakers from Microsoft, NVIDIA and the U.S. Army.

How to Apply Generative AI to Improve Cybersecurity, featuring Bartley Richardson, director of cybersecurity engineering at NVIDIA.

Healthcare

Healthcare Is Adopting Generative AI, Becoming One of the Largest Tech Industries, featuring Kimberly Powell, vice president of healthcare and life sciences at NVIDIA.

The Role of Generative AI in Modern Medicine, featuring speakers from ARK Investment Management, NVIDIA, Microsoft and Scripps Research.

How Artificial Intelligence Is Powering the Future of Biomedicine, featuring Priscilla Chan, cofounder and co-CEO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Mona Flores, global head of medical AI at NVIDIA.

Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods

Augmented Marketing in Beauty With Generative AI, featuring Asmita Dubey, chief digital and marketing officer at L’Oréal.

AI and the Radical Transformation of Marketing, featuring Stephan Pretorius, chief technology officer at WPP.

How Lowe’s Is Driving Innovation and Agility With AI, featuring Azita Martin, vice president of artificial intelligence for retail and consumer packaged goods at NVIDIA, and Seemantini Godbole, executive vice president and chief digital and information officer at Lowe’s.

Telecommunications

Special Address: Three Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Telecommunications, featuring Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice president of telecom at NVIDIA.

Generative AI as an Innovative Accelerator in Telcos, featuring Asif Hasan, cofounder of Quantiphi; Lilach Ilan, global head of business development, telco operations at NVIDIA; and Chris Halton, vice president of product strategy and innovation at Verizon.

How Telcos Are Enabling National AI Infrastructure and Platforms, featuring speakers from Indosat, NVIDIA, Singtel and Telconet.

Manufacturing

Accelerating Aerodynamics Analysis at Mercedes-Benz, featuring Liam McManus, technical product manager at Siemens; Erich Jehle-Graf of Mercedes Benz; and Ian Pegler, global business development, computer-aided design at NVIDIA.

Omniverse-Based Fab Digital Twin Platform for Semiconductor Industry, featuring Seokjin Youn, corporate vice president and head of the management information systems team at Samsung Electronics.

Digitalizing Global Manufacturing Supply Chains With Digital Twins, Powered by OpenUSD, featuring Kirk Fleischhaue, senior vice president at Foxconn.

Automotive

Applying AI & LLMs to Transform the Luxury Automotive Experience, featuring Chrissie Kemp, chief data and digital product officer at JLR (Jaguar Land Rover).

Accelerating Automotive Workflows With Large Language Models, featuring Bryan Goodman, director of artificial intelligence at Ford Motor Co.

How LLMs and Generative AI Will Enhance the Way We Experience Self-Driving Cars, featuring Alex Kendall, cofounder and CEO of Wayve.

Robotics 

Robotics and the Role of AI: Past, Present and Future, featuring Marc Raibert, executive director at The AI Institute, and Dieter Fox, senior director of robotics research at NVIDIA.

Breathing Life into Disney’s Robotic Characters With Deep Reinforcement Learning, featuring Mortiz Bächer, associate lab director of robotics at Disney Research.

Media and Entertainment 

Unlocking Creative Potential: The Synergy of AI and Human Creativity, featuring Andrea Gagliano, senior director of data science, AI/ML at Getty Images.

Beyond the Screen: Unraveling the Impact of AI in the Film Industry, featuring Nikola Todorovic, cofounder and CEO at Wonder Dynamics; Chris Jacquemin, head of digital strategy at WME; and Sanja Fidler, vice president of AI research at NVIDIA.

Revolutionizing Fan Engagement: Unleashing the Power of AI in Software-Defined Production, featuring ​​Lewis Smithingham, senior vice president of innovation and creative solutions at Media.Monks.

Energy

Panel: Building a Lower-Carbon Future With HPC and AI in Energy, featuring speakers from NVIDIA, Shell, ExxonMobil, Schlumberger and Petrobas.

The Increasing Complexity of the Electric Grid Demands Edge Computing, featuring Marissa Hummon, chief technology officer at Utilidata.

Browse a curated list of GTC sessions for business leaders of every technical level and area of interest.  

GFN Thursday celebrates this leap day with the addition of a popular game store to the cloud.

Stream the first titles from Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net, including Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, Call of Duty HQ and Hearthstone, now playable across more devices than ever.

They’re all part of the 30 new games coming to GeForce NOW in March, with eight available this week.

Plus, Day Passes, announced at CES, are coming to the cloud next week, enabling gamers to experience the benefits of GeForce NOW Ultimate and Priority memberships for 24 hours at a time.

Welcome to the Cloud

Battle.net is Blizzard’s digital storefront, a gateway to adventures in the Blizzard universe and home to a vibrant gaming community.

Members who own Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, Call of Duty HQ and Hearthstone on Battle.net can now stream these triple-A titles from NVIDIA GeForce RTX-powered servers in the cloud without worrying about hardware specs or long download times.

Battle the forces of evil in the dark, treacherous world of Diablo IV’s Sanctuary at up to 4K resolution and 120 frames per second with an Ultimate membership, even on under-powered devices. Assemble a deck to cast legendary spells in Hearthstone, and engage in epic firefights in Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty HQ at ultra-low latency thanks to the power of NVIDIA Reflex technology. Read this article and search for Hearthstone for more details on supported devices for this title.

Get ready to play Blizzard and Activision’s top-quality games anytime, anywhere. Battle.net joins supported platforms on GeForce NOW, including Steam, Epic Games Store, Xbox, Ubisoft Connect and GOG.com.

Not Mad at March

Imagine a paradise … infested with zombies! In Welcome to ParadiZe — now available for members to stream — capture, control and teach zombies to farm or fight in the beautiful country of ParadiZe. Explore the world’s unique flora and fauna while using the zombies to defend the camp and do the dirty work.

In addition, members can look for the following this week:

• STAR WARS: Dark Forces Remaster (New release on Steam, Feb. 28)
• Space Engineers (New release on Xbox, available on PC Game Pass, Feb. 29)
• Welcome to ParadiZe (New release on Steam, Feb. 29)
• Call of Duty HQ (Battle.net)
• Diablo IV (Battle.net)
• Fort Solis (Steam)
• Hearthstone (Battle.net)
• Overwatch 2 (Battle.net)

Plus, check out what the rest of March looks like:

• The Thaumaturge (New release on Steam, Mar. 4)
• Classified: France ’44 (New release on Steam, Mar. 5)
• Expeditions: A MudRunner Game (New release on Steam, Mar. 5)
• Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun (New release on Xbox, available on PC Game Pass, Mar. 5)
• Winter Survival (New release on Steam, Mar. 6)
• Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator (New release on Steam, Mar. 7)
• Hellbreach: Vegas (New release on Steam, Mar. 11)
• Crown Wars: The Black Prince (New release on Steam, Mar. 14)
• Outcast – A New Beginning (New release on Steam, Mar. 15)
• Alone in the Dark (New release on Steam, Mar. 20)
• Breachway (New release on Steam, Mar. 22)
• Palia (New release on Steam, Mar. 25)
• Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles (New release on Steam, Mar. 26)
• Millennia (New release on Steam, Mar. 26)
• Outpost: Infinity Siege (New release on Steam, Mar. 26)
• SOUTH PARK: SNOW DAY! (New release on Steam, Mar. 26)
• Balatro (Steam)
• PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (Steam)
• Portal: Revolution (Steam)
• STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R (Steam)
• STAR OCEAN THE SECOND STORY R – DEMO (Steam)
• Undisputed (Steam)

Fantastic February

In addition to the 27 games announced last month, five more joined the GeForce NOW library:

• Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor (New release on Steam, Feb. 14)
• Goat Simulator 3 (New release on Steam, Feb. 15)
• Le Mans Ultimate (New release on Steam, Feb. 20)
• art of rally (Xbox, available on Microsoft Store)
• Halo Infinite (Steam and Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)

The Thaumaturge didn’t make it in February due to a shift in its launch date, and is included in the March games list.

What are you planning to play this weekend? Let us know on X or in the comments below.

Wait for it…. pic.twitter.com/tXdyoeuQSP

— NVIDIA GeForce NOW (@NVIDIAGFN) February 28, 2024

Nations have long invested in domestic infrastructure to advance their economies, control their own data and take advantage of technology opportunities in areas such as transportation, communications, commerce, entertainment and healthcare.

AI, the most important technology of our time, is turbocharging innovation across every facet of society. It’s expected to generate trillions of dollars in economic dividends and productivity gains.

Countries are investing in sovereign AI to develop and harness such benefits on their own. Sovereign AI refers to a nation’s capabilities to produce artificial intelligence using its own infrastructure, data, workforce and business networks.

Why Sovereign AI Is Important

The global imperative for nations to invest in sovereign AI capabilities has grown since the rise of generative AI, which is reshaping markets, challenging governance models, inspiring new industries and transforming others — from gaming to biopharma. It’s also rewriting the nature of work, as people in many fields start using AI-powered “copilots.”

Sovereign AI encompasses both physical and data infrastructures. The latter includes sovereign foundation models, such as large language models, developed by local teams and trained on local datasets to promote inclusiveness with specific dialects, cultures and practices.

For example, speech AI models can help preserve, promote and revitalize indigenous languages. And LLMs aren’t just for teaching AIs human languages, but for writing software code, protecting consumers from financial fraud, teaching robots physical skills and much more.

In addition, as artificial intelligence and accelerated computing become increasingly critical tools for combating climate change, boosting energy efficiency and protecting against cybersecurity threats, sovereign AI has a pivotal role to play in equipping every nation to bolster its sustainability efforts.

Factoring In AI Factories

Comprising new, essential infrastructure for AI production are “AI factories,” where data comes in and intelligence comes out. These are next-generation data centers that host advanced, full-stack accelerated computing platforms for the most computationally intensive tasks.

Nations are building up domestic computing capacity through various models. Some are procuring and operating sovereign AI clouds in collaboration with state-owned telecommunications providers or utilities. Others are sponsoring local cloud partners to provide a shared AI computing platform for public- and private-sector use.

“The AI factory will become the bedrock of modern economies across the world,” NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said in a recent media Q&A.

Sovereign AI Efforts Underway

Nations around the world are already investing in sovereign AI.

Since 2019, NVIDIA’s AI Nations initiative has helped countries spanning every region of the globe to build sovereign AI capabilities, including ecosystem enablement and workforce development, creating the conditions for engineers, developers, scientists, entrepreneurs, creators and public sector officials to pursue their AI ambitions at home.

France-based Scaleway, a subsidiary of the iliad Group, is building Europe’s most powerful cloud-native AI supercomputer. The NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD comprises 127 DGX H100 systems, representing 1,016 NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs interconnected by NVIDIA NVLink technology and the NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand platform. NVIDIA DGX systems also include NVIDIA AI Enterprise software for secure, supported and stable AI development and deployment.

Swisscom Group, majority-owned by the Swiss government, recently announced its Italian subsidiary, Fastweb, will build Italy’s first and most powerful NVIDIA DGX-powered supercomputer — also using NVIDIA AI Enterprise software — to develop the first LLM natively trained in the Italian language.

With these NVIDIA technologies and its own cloud and cybersecurity infrastructures, Fastweb plans to launch an end-to-end system with which Italian companies, public-administration organizations and startups can develop generative AI applications for any industry.

The government of India has also announced sovereign AI initiatives promoting workforce development, sustainable computing and private-sector investment in domestic compute capacity. India-based Tata Group, for example, is building a large-scale AI infrastructure powered by the NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip, while Reliance Industries will develop a foundation LLM tailored for generative AI and trained on the diverse languages of the world’s most populous nation. NVIDIA is also working with India’s top universities to support and expand local researcher and developer communities.

Japan is going all in with sovereign AI, collaborating with NVIDIA to upskill its workforce, support Japanese language model development, and expand AI adoption for natural disaster response and climate resilience. These efforts include public-private partnerships that are incentivizing leaders like SoftBank Corp. to collaborate with NVIDIA on building a generative AI platform for 5G and 6G applications as well as a network of distributed AI factories.

Finally, Singapore is fostering a range of sovereign AI programs, including by partnering with NVIDIA to upgrade its National Super Computer Center, or NSCC, with NVIDIA H100 GPUs. In addition, Singtel, a leading communications services provider building energy-efficient AI factories across Southeast Asia, is accelerated by NVIDIA Hopper architecture GPUs and NVIDIA AI reference architectures.

Read more about sovereign AI and its transformative potential.

These days, just about everyone is a content creator. But can generative AI help make people create high-quality films and other content affordably? Find out from Pinar Seyhan Demirdag, cofounder and CEO of Cuebric, during his conversation with NVIDIA AI Podcast host Noah Kravitz.

Cuebric is on a mission to offer new solutions in filmmaking and content creation through immersive, two-and-a-half-dimensional cinematic environments. Its AI-powered application aims to help creators quickly bring their ideas to life, making high-quality production more accessible.

Demirdag discusses how Cuebric uses generative AI to enable the creation of engaging environments affordably. Listen in to find out about the current landscape of content creation, the role of AI in simplifying the creative process, and Cuebric’s participation in NVIDIA’s GTC technology conference.

Time Stamps:

1:15: Getting to know Pinar Seyhan Demirdag and Cuebric
2:30: The beginnings and goals of Cuebric
4:45: How Cuebric’s AI application works for filmmakers
9:00: Advantages of AI in content creation
13:20: Making high-quality production budget-friendly
17:35: The future of AI in creative endeavors
22:00: Cuebric at NVIDIA GTC

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Editor’s note: This post is part of our weekly In the NVIDIA Studio series, which celebrates featured artists, offers creative tips and tricks, and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio technology improves creative workflows. We’re also deep diving on new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU features, technologies and resources, and how they dramatically accelerate content creation.

YouTube content creator Ralph Panebianco really, really loves video games.

Since getting an original Nintendo Entertainment System at the age of four, Panebianco, this week’s featured In the NVIDIA Studio creator, has spent much of his free time playing video games. He pursued a career in gaming in his native country of Australia before pivoting to content creation, opening a YouTube channel called Skill Up, where he reviews the latest video games.

“When I wasn’t playing video games, I was reading about them, and now I get to talk about them for a living,” he said.

And calling all art fans: the latest Studio Standouts video features film noir-themed artwork brought to life with dramatic, monochromatic flair.

Video Editing Skillz

Panebianco works with his partner to create in-depth, insightful reviews of the latest video games on his Skill Up YouTube channel, which has garnered nearly 1 million subscribers. Below is a recent video reviewing Pacific Drive, a title available on the NVIDIA GeForce NOW cloud gaming service, powered by GeForce RTX GPUs.

“Creatively, we don’t view game reviews as functional buying guides with a list of pros and cons,” said Panebianco. “We view reviews as a chance to crack a game open and really show the audience what makes it tick. They’re sort of mini-essays on game design, delving deep into why specific game mechanics do or don’t work.”

The content creation process begins with booting up the game on his PC, powered by the recently launched GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER graphics card. This allows the Skill Up team to tap RTX ray tracing and NVIDIA DLSS — breakthrough technologies that use AI to create additional frames and improve image quality.

He records video footage primarily using GeForce Experience, a companion to NVIDIA GeForce GPUs that enables users to capture assets, optimize game settings and keep drivers up to date, among other features.

When footage requires high-dynamic range, the team uses the OBS Studio open-source software with AV1 hardware encoding to achieve 40% more efficient encoding on average than H.264 and deliver higher quality than competing GPUs.

“The AV1 encoder is ridiculously efficient in terms of file size,” he said.

Once the footage is ready, Panebianco writes a video script in Microsoft Word and then records himself, using Audacity. He uses the AI-powered NVIDIA Broadcast app, free for RTX GPU owners, to eliminate background noise and achieve professional studio quality.

Panebianco then hands off the files to his editor for production in Adobe Premiere Pro, where a number of GPU-accelerated, AI-powered features such as Enhance Speech, Auto Reframe and Unsharp Mask help speed the video editing process.

Next, Panebianco exports the final files twice as fast thanks to the dual AV1 encoders in his RTX GPU. Lastly, his editor creates a YouTube thumbnail in Adobe Photoshop, and then the video is ready for publishing.

“Almost my entire workflow was enhanced by NVIDIA’s hardware,” Panebianco shared. “It’s not just about the hardware making for efficient encoding or lightning-fast, hardware-enabled rendering — it’s about the end-to-end toolset.”

Panebianco has words of wisdom for aspiring content creators.

“Worry less about the numbers and more about the quality,” he said. “The metrics grind pays little in the way of dividends, but putting out truly excellent content is an almost failure-proof path to growth.”

Catch Panebianco’s video game reviews on the Skill Up YouTube channel.

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