Iconary

{{Short description|AI-driven video game}}

{{Infobox website

| name = Iconary

| logo = File:Iconary_Logo.svg

| website = {{url|https://iconary.allenai.org}}

| type = Game

| author = Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

| launch_date = {{start date|2019|02}}

}}Iconary is an AI-driven, Pictionary-style online game developed at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Publicly released in February 2019, the game is designed to encourage collaborative communication between a human player and the AI player AllenAI. Iconary is the first demonstration of an AI system capable of playing a Pictionary-like game with a human partner.{{Cite web|url=https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-future-brain/201902/ai2-creates-world-s-first-ai-play-pictionary-game|title=AI2 Creates World's First AI to Play a Pictionary-like Game|website=Psychology Today|language=en-US|access-date=2019-03-06}}

Researchers at the institute intended Iconary to highlight the potential of collaborative communication with an AI agent in a game setting, as contrasted with other highly publicized AI-backed games that place humans in adversarial roles against an AI system. Pictionary creator Robert Angel noted of Iconary "it’s not me against you, it’s us as a team against another team”.{{Cite web|url=https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/what-does-the-seattle-man-who-invented-pictionary-think-about-its-artificial-intelligence-use/|title=What does the Seattle man who invented Pictionary think about its artificial-intelligence use?|date=2019-02-08|website=The Seattle Times|language=en-US|access-date=2019-03-06}}

The AllenAI system behind Iconary can compose scenes based on a given phrase for the human player to guess, as well as attempt to guess a phrase depicted by the human player. The AllenAI system combines elements of computer vision, natural language understanding, and commonsense reasoning to compose scenes or to make guesses about a scene.{{Cite web|url=https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612882/an-ai-is-playing-pictionary-to-figure-out-how-the-world-works/|title=An AI is playing Pictionary to figure out how the world works|last=Knight|first=Will|website=MIT Technology Review|language=en|access-date=2019-03-06}} The system was trained using data from collaborative games between two human players, using over 75,000 unique phrases and a constrained set of 1,200 icons.{{Cite web|url=https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/05/play-iconary-a-simple-drawing-game-that-hides-a-deceptively-deep-ai/|title=Play Iconary, a simple drawing game that hides a deceptively deep AI|website=TechCrunch|language=en-US|access-date=2019-03-06}} The phrases used in Iconary describe complex scenes or activities, e.g., “people jogging in the park” or “engineer riding a train”. The limited vocabulary of icons requires players to create novel combinations of icons to communicate a phrase to their partner, and to make use of abstract symbols (like arrows to signify motion) or contextual clues (like a stethoscope next to a figure of a person to signify "doctor") to successfully depict a concept.