United Kingdom, April 24 -- An AI-powered robot is able to beat elite players at table tennis.

The machine, called Ace, has been built by experts at Sony AI - who feel that it is on a par with achievements such as IBM's Deep Blue beating chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997.

AI has long excelled at board games but the physical demands of table tennis - such as rapid ball speed and wicked spin - have been seen as particularly demanding for the technology to master.

Peter Stone, chief scientist at Sony AI, said: "This breakthrough is much bigger than table tennis. Once AI can operate at an expert human level under these conditions, it opens the door to an entirely new class of real-world applications that were previously out of reach...