PAC-MAN Recreated With AI

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the PAC-MAN release in Japan, NVIDIA has revealed a version of the game recreated entirely by an AI. The NVIDIA Research team presented a new AI model called GameGAN that was trained on 50,000 episodes of the game. 

The main trick was to make the AI model learn how to play the game. After watching thousands of hours of gameplay and studying the most successful moves, AI can control games, repeat strategies, and fight against players.

The team used a farm of four computers, each featuring a Quadro GV100 workstation-grade GPU, and imported 50,000 hours of Pac-Man gameplay. After studying the game, the AI model developed its own identical-looking game.

"Our AI didn't see any of [the game's] code, just pixels coming out of the game engine," Nvidia's Hector Marinez told Ars Technica. "By watching this, it learned the rules." The AI learned all about Pac-Man's speed, movement abilities, and wall mechanics, and other aspects. 

The team will share their AI tribute to the game later this year on AI Playground for anyone to experience the recreated version. You can learn more here.