Grand Theft Auto V and other open world computer games are being used by researchers to train artificial intelligence systems that could one day power computers responsible for self-driving cars.

Commercially available assisted driving systems, as well as most prototype autonomous vehicle technologies, work best in closed environments, such as freeways and motorways, where the number of variables that need to accounted for by the computer are limited.

These types of roads are more tightly regulated than urban or suburban streets, where lanes are often unmarked, cars are parked, kids play ball, pets dash out, work crews toil away, cyclists abound, buildings encroach, and pedestrians cross whenever they think the coast is clear.

Machine learning, whether used for autonomous vehicles or other purposes, requires a large amount of data to be ingested, classified, and then verified.

This can be problematic for developers of self-driving vehicle technology as acquiring video of various real-world driving situations and tagging them up with the necessary data labels — such as tree, road, traffic light, pedestrian, car, building, footpath and so forth — is a time consuming and painstaking venture.