It’s an April Fools’ Day miracle.
On Tuesday, Nvidia (NVDA-0.30%) unveiled its experimental version of Project G-Assist, an AI assistant for gamers and gaming content creators that the company first teased as a joke on X (then Twitter) on April Fools’ Day in 2017. Nvidia demoed the feature at computer and technology trade show Computex Taipei last year.
The AI assistant will be available via the NVIDIA app to desktop users of the company’s visual computing platform GeForce RTX; laptop support will come in a future update.
While the assistant can’t do everything advertised in the April Fools’ prank eight years ago (it certainly can’t tell you when your drinks have been optimally chilled in the fridge), it does help PC gamers control and optimize a wide variety of PC settings via simple voice or text commands.
The assistant can provide real-time diagnostics and recommendations to improve power efficiency or optimize game settings. It can also control peripheral settings such as keyboard colors, fan speeds, and the lighting in your room on supported devices. And for content creators who film themselves gaming, the assistant makes it easier to record their screen.
The model uses a small language model (SLM), so this assistant isn’t supposed to be a broad, conversational AI, Nvidia said in a press release. But AI developers can leverage and extend the assistant’s capabilities through the use of plug-ins. For example, users can add a Spotify (SPOT+1.64%) plug-in to enable music and volume control via voice command while gaming, or they can add Google’s (GOOGL+1.47%) Gemini plug-in to bring more complex conversations and web searches that can help users get live advice on gameplay.
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