This Grand Theft Auto Online Stream Highlights A Driverless Car

Some people are really getting creative when it comes to their Grand Theft Auto Online stream sessions – especially this law enforcement officer who lives for nothing further than keeping San Andreas safe from criminals. But a new stream has emerged that features a rather unlikely star – a driverless vehicle.

According to Polygon, the car's name is Charles, and it's the creation of programmer Harrison Kinsley. Based on details on his blog, he was looking to utilize Grand Theft Auto V's intricate AI in a creative fashion – and that's when the car came into play.

He's developed quite a bit utilizing the OpenAI Universe tech, where artificial intelligence can actually learn and adapt to certain environments – and a driverless car in Grand Theft Auto Online seems like the perfect spot to test out a few things.

"Just in case it's not totally obvious, why GTA V? At least for me, Grand Theft Auto 5 is a great environment to practice in for a variety of reasons," Kinsley noted on his blog. "It's an open world with endless things you can do, but let's consider even just a simple one: Self-driving cars. With GTA V, we can use mods to control the time of day, weather, traffic, speeds, what happens when we crash...all kinds of things (mainly using mods, but this isn't absolutely required). It's just a completely customize-able environment."

The current stream for Charles currently holds over 1,400 viewers, indicating that it's a smash of a success – even if the vehicle itself doesn't do much aside from adapt to behaviors within the game. Still, it's a fascinating project that's getting a lot of attention.

"Charles only sees exactly what you see," Kinsley noted, although he did indicate that he was going to make changes in the future, like adding short-term memory and self-learning to the program. "I may also try other games with this method, since I also think we can teach an AI to play games by simply showing it how to play for a bit, using a Convolutional Neural Network on that information, and then letting the AI poke around."

If you want to check out the stream for yourself, we've included it in video below. Again, don't expect the most slam-bang of adventures (although there are crashes and odd moments), since it's just a car pretty much driving everywhere and adapting to certain things within the environment. Do expect, however, some great AI adaptations that show the evolution of just what a good system can do.

Grand Theft Auto Online is available now, as part of Grand Theft Auto V, for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.