Sony AI's autonomous robot Ace, described in a Nature cover paper published April 23, 2026, defeated three of five elite players in head-to-head matches under official ITTF regulations—the first autonomous system to achieve competitive parity with elite human athletes in an unmodified, real-world physical sport. The system pairs nine high-speed cameras with event-based vision sensors that track ball spin up to 450 rad/s, and uses model-free reinforcement learning rather than hand-coded motion models. In subsequent matches through March 2026, Ace also defeated multiple professional players across separate competitive events, demonstrating continued improvement after the original manuscript was submitted.