By Karissa Bell2015-01-19 22:33:44 UTC

Mario just got a lot a smarter.

A team of German researchers has used artificial intelligence to create a "self-aware" version of Super Mario who can respond to verbal commands and automatically play his own game.

The Mario Lives project was created by a team of researchers out of Germany's University of Tbingen as part of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's (AAAI) annual video competition. Each year the competition showcases videos from researchers and scientists from around the world that demonstrate "exciting artificial intelligence advances in research, education, and application."

The video depicts Mario's newfound ability to learn from his surroundings and experiences, respond to questions in English and German and automatically react to "feelings."

If Mario is hungry, for example, he collects coins. "When he's curious he will explore his environment and autonomously gather knowledge about items he doesn't know much about," the video's narrator explains.

The video also demonstrates Mario's ability to learn from experience. When asked "What do you know about Goomba" that's Mario's longtime enemy in the Super Mario series Mario first responds "I do not know anything about it."

But after Mario, responding to a voice command, jumps on Goomba and kills it, he is asked the question again. This time, he responds "If I jump on Goomba then it maybe dies."

The team behind Mario Lives, from the University of Tbingen's Cognitive Modeling department, used Carnegie Mellon's speech recognition software and principles of psychology to create the new "self-aware" version of Nintendo's famous plumber, according to the video.

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Researchers create 'self-aware' Super Mario with artificial intelligence