We’ve heard a lot from established brands at CES 2024, of course, but there are also newcomers touting various wares, including AI Shark.
This is a company – whose head Todd Hays was the US CEO of the team behind GameShark, which enabled cheats in console games in the 1990s – that makes a number of ‘intelligent gaming accessories’ including an AI-powered mouse, keyboard, game controller , headset and a gaming hub.
As you might expect, all of these planned innovations use AI to make you a better gamer.
The gaming mouse is said to adjust DPI settings on-the-fly to ensure mouse movements and cursor movements are “always accurate and smooth”, learning your movement patterns over time and optimizing tracking and sensitivity to suit match your own personal mouse style.
The keyboard is designed in much the same vein, analyzing keystrokes and learning your playing style, then suggesting remapped key configurations or macros that the AI deems useful.
The controller is also built according to a similar philosophy, suggesting button remapping and sensitivity adjustments, and includes sensors to detect your grip and pressure, and much more.
What about the headphones? This uses AI to tap into “advanced audio processing capabilities” and pinpoint things like another player’s footsteps in a shooter, and presumably the direction they’re in. Additionally, it can provide verbal cues that highlight certain events in the game so you don’t. I don’t miss them. (Apparently AI Shark contacted Altec Lansing to produce the headphones).
Finally, the AI Shark Core is the gaming hub, described as an “inline computing unit designed to process real-time video, allowing for instant game analysis and feedback.”
PC gamerwho picked up on all of this notes that the products appear to be in very early stages at the moment, and the images provided on the AI Shark website are hastily concocted mock-ups (using, for example, Altec Lansing Whisper headphones with the AI Shark logo on them).
Hays told PC Gamer that the peripherals are currently “product concepts with technical demo proof of concepts already developed.”
Analysis: coach class
The powers of the various controllers (gamepad, keyboard, mouse) are fairly clear at a basic level, even if the grainy details are not. Mind you, the headset is more vague in terms of how the described implementation will work, and the same goes for the overarching gaming hub. Presumably the latter connects between your monitor and PC – and also peripherals, perhaps a bit like a KVM switch? – to provide an analysis of the games you play.
AI Shark says the hub will provide “strategic insights” into your gaming that evolve with you as a player. The company describes it this way: “Whether you’re a novice learning the ropes or a seasoned professional refining your tactics, the AI Core takes your game to the next level by providing real-time adjustments and feedback. It’s like having a personal game coach.”
To be honest, we could have imagined this kind of thing coming to the world of PC gaming for a while now. Clearly, the usefulness of any AI coach will depend heavily on how useful and valuable the feedback given is, and we can’t even guess how that might play out.
Be that as it may, the wider use of AI in gaming will raise all kinds of questions and likely controversies in terms of what is considered fair and what isn’t (or what could even be borderline cheating).
Another product at CES 2024 has raised concerns along these lines, namely the MSI Monitor that uses AI to spot enemies on the mini-map and notify them to you (in case you miss their presence), which is arguably a bit of a cheat . And since the AI processing takes place via an embedded chip in the monitor itself, this isn’t something that can be detected and prevented on the server side.
Never mind the debate over whether console keyboard and mouse gamers have an unfair advantage over controller players (of course they do) – prepare for a future where the limits of hardware and software-based benefits are becoming increasingly vague, not to mention becoming increasingly controversial thanks to AI.
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