Sony Establishes A New Sony Artificial Intelligence Global Division

Online portals like Slashgear and others have brought the news that tech giant Sony is launching a new global division which will have its focus on developing artificial intelligence, The goal is to apply MA through gaming, photography and even cooking. It is planned that the new division will have offices throughout the world. As reported, Hiroaki Kitano, President, and CEO of Sony Computer Science Laboratories will be the global head of Sony AI. Peter Stone will be the US chief, a computer science researcher with a storied background in Reinforcement Learning and Robotics.

The news coincides with Sony’s official press release about the research agreement the company signed with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) on joint work to develop AI and robotics. Their initial efforts will focus on cooking and delivery.

Already trying to strengthen their AI-development efforts, Sony has brought back  Aibo robotic dog with the new version set to take “full advantage of things like cloud processing, facial recognition, and learning AI’s to make the pup more realistic and engaging.” While Aibo development on the surface might seem like “ fairly playful interpretation of artificial intelligence,” Sony’s purpose behind the toy’s development is to explore  “how such technologies can ‘unleash human imagination and creativity with AI,’ tapping into all of the company’s different divisions in the process. It’ll also look beyond Sony’s existing businesses, to figure out new potential applications.”

Using this as a stepping stone, Sony’s teams in Japan, the US, and Europe plan to launch “three flagship projects’” one of which is the aforementioned gastronomy research with CMU. The other two planned fields are gaming and imaging&sensing.

Sony points out that it is focusing on gaming as games are widely used in AI experiments, and “and game worlds are a commonly implemented research method to develop artificial intelligence.’ Of course, there is a more direct application on Sony products as the new AI teams could “help the PlayStation team develop smarter in-game characters.”

For imaging and sensing, Sony aims to produce new types of sensors that can be used as “sense organs” for artificial intelligence. “In that case, we can consider AI systems in a wide variety of scenarios, from real-time data analysis to robots, to agents within a server space. Each of those scenarios has different requirements in terms of processing time or level of input necessary.” In that field, as Endgadget notes, Sony has already made strides in products like the A6600 camera, where it contributes to an impressive improvement in autofocus.

Discussing its plans to develop the AI-use in gastronomy, Sony says that it intends to “harness AI and robotics from the perspective of “getting closer to creators,” and with the aim of expanding the creative options/creativity of chefs. Top-level chefs can gain inspiration for new recipes by interacting with AI, and we also want to help all of those who prepare food in their day to day lives to enjoy that process of creation even more.”