At the first-ever Sony Creators Conference held on August 8th and 9th, 2023 in Los Angeles, California, Hiroaki Kitano, Senior Executive Vice President and CTO of Sony Group Corporation, took the stage to deliver a keynote featuring a range of creators leading entertainment content creation across the Sony Group.
This edition of the Corporate Blog gives an overview of the keynote speech. To watch the archive footage, please visit Sony Square.

Kitano's journey of pioneering creation

Kitano began his presentation with "AIBO", one of his many ambitious attempts to explore the intersection of technology and entertainment. As part of the initial R&D project team behind Sony`s first generation AIBO, he described how the team came up with the idea of an "entertainment robot" as well as technology they implemented in its prototype. To realize this new form of entertainment, the team leveraged what was at the time state-of-the-art technology, such as a distributed operating system, hot plug-and-play feature and an OpenR standard interface. Today, a new generation of "aibo," created by a new team and featuring new technology, continues to push the boundaries of robotics and make people happy.

In addition to robotics, Kitano recounted being at the forefront of advances in computer and the use of data, another major evolution in technology. He noted that the scale of data and computing power that seemed large enough 30 years ago, when he was developing natural language processing systems that enabled real-time spoken language translations at Carnegie Mellon University, was minute compared to the massive data and computing power available today.

He also emphasized that data and computing power will play an essential role in the next generation of entertainment for creators to fully realize their vision. One thing never changes: Sony's priority in exploring new technology is ensuring it empowers creativity in an ethical and responsible way. We want to allow more people access to better creative tools and elevate human creativity with innovation, because Sony is on the side of creators.

Sony's technology both in digital virtual world and physical real world

With the mission of unleashing human imagination and creativity, Sony established a new research organization, called Sony AI, in 2020. One of its first projects was to develop a superhuman racing agent for Gran Turismo series, a driving simulator for PlayStation®, which would inspire even the best human drivers. The research team, using a new distributed deep reinforcement learning method, successfully developed Gran Turismo Sophy (GT Sophy). One of the most impressive things to come out of this development was the fact that the human drivers were able to learn from GT Sophy. The team is now working towards incorporating GT Sophy as a permanent feature of the game as well as partnering with more PlayStation game studios to enable game developers to create even more exciting games.

Kitano continued with Sony's technological strength and how it extends into the real world, as a global leader in imaging and sensing technology. Sony's unique intelligent vision sensor IMX500, equipped with on-chip edge-side image processing capability, and the AITRIOS edge computing platform, enables creative solutions for a sustainable society. The range and combination of technologies that Sony offers, from advanced vision sensing to production capabilities in the virtual space, reinforce each other to bring new possibilities to creators. Sony`s partnership with Raspberry Pi also provides the millions of users and developers in the Raspberry Pi community access to our intelligent vision sensing technology.

A Company of and for creators

Kitano said that with the Sony Creator Conference, Sony also hopes to build a community of people who work at the intersection of technology and creativity. "A creator is anybody who challenges the status quo to create something new", he stated, highlighting that Sony identifies creators as artists of all kinds as well as technologists, innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, scientists, anyone that creates the future, emphasizing the point that "we are all creators".

"Sony is a company of creators. We are a creative entertainment company that makes games, music, film, animation, and more. Because we are creators ourselves, every technology we develop is designed to empower creators of all kinds. We are here for creators." Kitano emphasized, before inviting some of the top creators from across Sony Group to talk about how technology impacts creativity.

Creators at the intersection of creativity and technology

<Mike Ford, CTO of Sony Pictures Imageworks>

Mike Ford talked about the creative process needed to develop the groundbreaking visuals in the blockbuster animated hit "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,". He recalled the challenges of exploring and visualizing the looks of six unique locations across the Spider-Verse and building more than 600 new characters to inhabit these worlds. To accomplish this, his team ended up building more in-house tools than any other project in Sony Picture's 31-year history. He concluded that one of the key elements to the film's success was that, through their process of exploration and discovery, working alongside talented software teams, brilliant artists and demanding creative partners, spontaneous mix of art and technology was created.

<Meghan Morgan Juinio, Director of Product Development at Santa Monica Studio, PlayStation Studios>

Meghan Morgan Juinio introduced how the God of War franchise has always been about pushing technology to realize an innovative, creative vision. Since the launch of "God of War" in 2018, the Santa Monica Studio team has strived to evolve how games deliver narrative storytelling, with the vision to shoot the entire game in one shot for a more immersive player experience. To further evolve cinematic storytelling in the latest "God of War Ragnarök," which features more characters, multiple storylines and gameplay allowing players to visit various locations within a vast scale world, it took a cross-departmental team of experts from all disciplines to realize the vision. She expressed her awe of what a creative team with the right technology support can deliver to the world, including over 70 accessibility features enabling more players than ever before to experience the God of War.

<Kazunori Yamauchi, CEO of Polyphony Digital>

Kazunori Yamauchi, creator of Gran Turismo™, the driving simulator series which has been pushing what's possible with computer graphics for over 25 years, discussed the source of reality for the Gran Turismo series by referring to the methods in natural science and how video game production is actually not different. He also introduced his company`s simple production mantra: "to quantify nature and the universe so that it becomes something that can be calculated" and explained how this applies to his team's day-to-day game production. In every stage, human creativity is essential - in deciding how to capture good quality data, how to model objects and calculate them, and in ultimately elevating the output from finite computational resources into an effective form of "expression". He closed by stating his belief that having all the necessary technology and talent required for all these stages is Sony`s biggest strength, and how the PDI team is looking forward to working with the next generation of creators aspiring to pursue science and expression.

<Carter Swan, Senior Producer, PlayStation Productions>

Carter Swan talked about his team's commitment to staying true to Kazunori Yamauchi`s vision for ultra- realism in adapting Gran Turismo to the big screen, which also required groundbreaking technology in filmmaking. To avoid as much CGI as possible so that the movie could convey the real heat, speed, and danger of racing, one of the biggest challenges was getting a camera with the size and resolution needed, that could fit inside the cockpit of a racecar as well as be mounted on the cars. Sony`s VENICE Extension System 2 allowed them to detach the camera body from the image sensor block, giving filmmakers new creative freedom - to get the camera head into tight spaces to film and to easily mount it on gimbals and cranes. This enabled the team to capture the excitement of racing, and the real effects of G force on the actors. He emphasized how the film was only able to come to life because so many different branches of Sony worked together, all focused on honoring the groundbreaking realism of the most successful franchise in PlayStation's history.

Pioneering the future of creation together

Kitano returned to stage with all the guest speakers and concluded the keynote, stating "I hope we've been able to demonstrate Sony's commitment to build the technology that helps you to realize your creative vision. We are here for creators. We want to bring this event to even more creators across the globe, and we hope to build the next generation of technology together with you. Let's work together to pioneer the future of creation."

To learn about other sessions from Sony Creators Conference, please click on each image.