Opinion: Straight4's AI Commentary is Anything But Impressive

[Julian Strasser]

... on the contrary, it might be detrimental.

Now let's get one thing out of the way before we start. This is my personal opinion. And it is biased, as I enjoy commentating over races and have a high standard of what to expect. So let me explain my disposition.

Ah, before we start, I am no going to explain anything about the AI, I think all necessary points on how it works have been made in the video above.

Problem 1: Are the Commentators OK with this?​

There has been a major uproar, especially in the art community, when AI became big recently. Pretty much all artists had one reaction:

->
(surprise to anger)

And I get that. What would you do if someone tried to destroy your livelihood with inferior produce?

And AI art, as well as AI voice acting (under which this AI commentary can be filed) is straight-up worse than a real human.

As a commentator myself, I am disgusted by this premise and the quality of the showcase. I wouldn't allow my vocal recordings to be used to comment on stuff that I haven't agreed on. And there's no saying what they could make my voice say. All kinds of defamatory stuff could be fed to the AI to, in the end, make me sound bad.

Furthermore, I am sure other commentators are on board with me here.

Problem 2: Who Would this Product be for?​

Now, who actually receives any benefits from this?

Pretty much only leagues do. Making their races available to the public with a proto-commentary. But then we are going to have another problem: Who Cares? This is a way to oversaturate the market of racing broadcasts beyond belief.

Now let's be real: how many people watch motorsports broadcasts? I am sure many. How many watch anything that is not F1? Now it's already getting much smaller. Now let's take out MotoGP, WEC, IMSA and NASCAR, are there still any watchers left? Hardly. And now we're only starting to move into DIGITAL stuff. How many of you watch random leagues that you find out in the interwebs? And as the majority of you will say "no", how many of you would start watching those broadcasts with AI commentary?

So this is, by the most favourable outlook, a new way to get hours of motorsports content out in return for 10s of views. Congratulations, you have just made the market more uninteresting.

Not to mention that bigger broadcasters could also benefit from this by just firing their regular commentators and replacing them with AI! Money saved! And it just cost a few people their livelihood and life's dream! Lovely.

(I'm sure I don't need to mention it, but who would want to hear TV commentary while racing instead of just watching...?)

Problem 3: It's just bad.​

I have watched the video showcasing the tech. Now, I am certain this is not the final product. However,

it acted like a sleeping pill on me.

There is no way an AI could make commentary as interesting and diverse as humans can make it. And if this tech demo is anything to go by, the aforementioned flood of new content coming to the interwebs is just going to be a bland pile of redacted.

My Conclusion​

One thing I have to mention is that I am no enemy of AI. I find many things it can do interesting. However, I think it is limited. And this concept is scratching one important limitation of software:

It can only replicate, not innovate.

I could go forward in life without having to sift through tons and tons of racing broadcasts with subpar commentary flooding my YouTube recommended section.

So, let the storm commence. What do you think? Let us know in the comments down below!

 

[dwightyone]

Think it is has potential to be a very handy product for streamers who don't want to faff about with commentary during the race i.e. people like me. Being a one man team I find myself in periods of a race where I feel like I need to talk to fill in the silence during the more boring periods of a race but I have no one to bounce off - this should help.

When this comes to fruition I would talk to an audience before and after the race and use the AI commentary during the actual race and hopefully the commentary gets overruled when I interject and then automatically resumes when I have finished what I wanted to say - wouldn't it be awesome if the AI commentary interacted with me!? I also liked the way it picked up the driver skimmeing the wall with his car and the AI reaction to that - thought that was pretty neat it could do that (telemetry I guess).

To sum up I'm cr*p at commentary and admit it's difficult to do properly without sounding like an idiot

 

[jgf]

AI commentary would be completely irrelevant to me. If on during a sim race I would disable it as too distracting; and since I rarely, very rarely, record anything other than an occasional hotlap it would serve no purpose otherwise.

And while I obviously enjoy race sims, back to teh days of "Grand Prix Unlimited" and "Indianapolis 500:The Simulation", I've no interest in watching a sim race. (Not a commentary on those who do enjoy such, just personal preference.) A couple of years ago I was perplexed by 2-3 hours coverage on network TV one Saturday afternoon of some video game championship; I enjoy such games but what is the purpose watching someone else play.

(An aside to those who post videos, please mention in the title if it's a sim race. It is irritating to wait for youtube to load a million terabytes of data only to find it is a sim video, not a real race.)

 

[Emery]

It's not something I'd listen to while racing. Hearing your name during a replay nicely feeds the ego. Livestreams will become horribly similar when everybody stops their own commentaries.

 

[Emery]

Let's just hope they put as much (or more) effort into the singleplayer driving AI.

 

[Peter Conway]

Let's just hope they put as much (or more) effort into the singleplayer driving AI.

I think that single player offline mode is greatly under valued by industry leaders and 'scribes' alike, because it's about the only place where average Bob from next door can race a field of thirty cars and have a good day.

 

[jgf]

I think that single player offline mode is greatly under valued by industry leaders and 'scribes' alike, because it's about the only place where average Bob from next door can race a field of thirty cars and have a good day.

Sadly multiplayer is where the money is. You buy a game and play it alone at home and the devs get a one time payment; with multiplayer they're either getting monthly fees or they have a captive audience on "free" servers to inundate with marketing.

I recall years ago, when there were a dozen computer game magazines on the market and multiplayer was new, reviewers would give a poor rating to any game, no matter how excellent otherwise, if it didn't have a multiplayer option. This became so prevalent I was moved to write several of them, and astounded when one printed my letter; a concise assessment of the situation and "you would give a bad rating to a new solitaire game if it didn't have multiplayer".

But, for me, if the AI in any new sim is as adjustable as in GTR2 it should be acceptable. It will take time and patience to get it all adjusted to your satisfaction, but that's a good excuse to run more laps.

 

[Peter Conway]

Sadly multiplayer is where the money is. You buy a game and play it alone at home and the devs get a one time payment; with multiplayer they're either getting monthly fees or they have a captive audience on "free" servers to inundate with marketing.

I recall years ago, when there were a dozen computer game magazines on the market and multiplayer was new, reviewers would give a poor rating to any game, no matter how excellent otherwise, if it didn't have a multiplayer option. This became so prevalent I was moved to write several of them, and astounded when one printed my letter; a concise assessment of the situation and "you would give a bad rating to a new solitaire game if it didn't have multiplayer".

But, for me, if the AI in any new sim is as adjustable as in GTR2 it should be acceptable. It will take time and patience to get it all adjusted to your satisfaction, but that's a good excuse to run more laps.

Paying £30 a month for the interweb is as far as I'll go, I'm not about to fork out more for the privilege of playing the game once I've shelled out to buy it, single player Off-Line mode is essential for me, I'd rather be Billy-no-mates than Billy-Broke.

Yeah, games with easy, medium and hardcore are (as far as I'm concerned not that bothered about the average joe and her or his needs, with GTR2 even going up from 100 to 101% (can mean a 1:40 instead of a 1:41 at Donnington) can be a lesson and in addition to that GTR2 allows us to increase and decrease aggression, meaning that if you wanna race slow but determined 'ejerts' you can make em' slow but psychotic, at the other end of the scale you can make the owners of GTO's drive their pants off the car but respect the paintwork in battle, that to me as you rightly say is a bloody good job.
There's still a way to go but using that as a base model it can be honed, and I hope it does

 

[s0cks]

I think AI commentary for single player sports games would be great tbh. I would much rather human commentators for live events though.

I also kinda hate what AI is doing to our creative industries.