In possibly one of the strangest things to appear at CES this week, videos are being shared of a new holographic Mario that uses AI to answer a variety of questions. It’s unclear as to where exactly this would be used, if it ever would be, but the Target logo in the bottom left suggests it could appear in stores to help shoppers.
Check out the live demonstration below, where Mario helps Twitter User Greggory with buying video games and eating healthier. Seeing as he didn’t recommend any mushrooms, the algorithm must have been trained on Chris Pratt’s rendition of the character…
Greggory promises to capture more footage of our new Italian overlords soon enough, so stay tuned.
There’s no word as to whether Nintendo themselves are involved in this project. However, it seems unlikely that they at the very least didn’t give the ok to use Mario’s likeness in this demonstration. The project is clearly still in development, with the voice especially needing some work. That being said, I don’t hate this, especially if it can get to the point where it gives us a good representation of Mario. At the very least it could lead to some funny encounters, similar to the one above.
UPDATE: Proto, the company behind this experiment, has confirmed to Kotaku that Nintendo didn’t sign off on the use of Mario. A Proto rep stated that, “AARP and Nintendo were not involved in the inadvertent showing today. The fact that so many gamers of the world have taken notice shows that they are the best fans in the world and we salute them.”
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