Game Intelligence
News & features
Collaborators: Gaming AI with Haiyan Zhang
| Gretchen Huizinga and Haiyan Zhang
For over a decade, Xbox has been leveraging AI to elevate gaming. Haiyan Zhang, GM of Gaming AI, explores the collaborations behind the work and the potential for generative AI to support better experiences for both players and game creators.
Awards | AAMAS 2023
Best Paper Award at AAMAS 2023
Best Paper Award at the 2023 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems for “Trust Region Bounds for Decentralized PPO Under Non-stationarity” by Mingfei Sun, Sam Devlin, Jacob Beck, Katja Hofmann and Shimon Whiteson
Using generative AI to imitate human behavior
| Tim Pearce, Tabish Rashid, Anssi Kanervisto, Dave Bignell, Mingfei Sun, Raluca Stevenson, Sergio Valcarcel Macua, Shanzheng Tan, Ida Momennejad, Katja Hofmann, and Sam Devlin
Diffusion models have been used to generate photorealistic images and short videos, compose music, and synthesize speech. In a new paper, Microsoft Researchers explore how they can be used to imitate human behavior in interactive environments.
In the news | VentureBeat
Why games may not be the best benchmark for AI
Microsoft believes in the power of gaming as a platform for AI, pointing to Project Paidia. “With projects like this, we’re showing how AI is shifting from competitive applications to being used to empower players to achieve more,” Sam Devlin…
Designer-centered reinforcement learning
| Batu Aytemiz, Mikhail Jacob, Sam Devlin, and Katja Hofmann
In video games, nonplayer characters, bots, and other game agents help bring a digital world and its story to life. They can help make the mission of saving humanity feel urgent, transform every turn of a corner into a gamer’s…
Research Collection – Shall we play a game?
From a research point of view, games offer an amazing environment in which to develop new machine learning algorithms and techniques. And we hope, in due course, that those new algorithms will feed back not just into gaming, but into…
Awards | AIIDE 2020
Best Paper Award at AIIDE 2020
Best Paper Award at the 16th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE 2020) for “It’s Unwieldy and It Takes a Lot of Time.” Challenges and Opportunities for Creating Agents in Commercial Games by Jacob, Devlin and…
MineRL sample-efficient reinforcement learning challenge—back for a second year—benefits organizers, as well as larger research community
| Noboru Sean Kuno
To unearth a diamond in the block-based open world of Minecraft requires the acquisition of materials and the construction of tools before any diamond mining can even begin. Players need to gather wood, which they’ll use to make a wood…
Three new reinforcement learning methods aim to improve AI in gaming and beyond
| Kamil Ciosek, Sam Devlin, and Katja Hofmann
Reinforcement learning (RL) provides exciting opportunities for game development, as highlighted in our recently announced Project Paidia (opens in new tab)—a research collaboration between our Game Intelligence (opens in new tab) group at Microsoft Research Cambridge and game developer Ninja…