Nvidia’s ‘AI game assistant’ April Fools’ joke might be real

April Fools’ Day is the bane of any tech news writer’s existence. Never mind that these sad attempts at comedy from marketing people are sometimes barely distinguishable from real products — especially when they come days or weeks before April 1st. I always have to be on guard, and Nvidia has decided to make my job even harder.

Back in 2017, Nvidia made an April Fools’ joke introducing the “GTX G-Assist,” a USB device you could plug into your gaming PC that would literally play games for you.

The tongue-in-cheek video described a system that was essentially a game bot, which would mimic your personal play style and even emote and taunt when appropriate. Less believable parts included ordering pizza for you or alerting you when your energy drinks were sufficiently cooled in the fridge.

Last night, Nvidia’s GeForce account retweeted its original post from seven years ago, adding the missive: “The future is never far away…” With Computex right around the corner and AI being the inescapable buzzword of the industry (boosting Nvidia to obscene profits), it’s hard not to read between the lines.

As Tom’s Hardware points out, it’s extremely unlikely that Nvidia will actually release a tool that plays games for you, doubly so for any kind of online multiplayer game. (That already exists — it’s called a bot — and it’s not “AI” even in the very loose sense of the term being used right now.)

But Nvidia has been putting AI features, or at least an “AI” label, onto more and more of its products lately. Some kind of in-game helper system isn’t out of the question, perhaps as an extension of the existing Nvidia App overlay. Such tools are already being developed to a greater or lesser degree of actual utility.

We’ll have to wait for Computex to see if this is a teaser leading up to an actual product or merely an Nvidia social media person bringing up a timely joke.