Robots have learned how to communicate with each other by creating their own language, a new report explains.

Experts at artificial intelligence research group OpenAI conducted an experiment that challenged software bots to complete a series of tasks, such as moving to a specific location, in a simple, two-dimensional virtual world.

The team used a technique called reinforcement learning, presenting the challenges as cooperative rather than competitive, and rewarding the robots for completing them.

“We’ve just released initial results in which we teach AI agents to create language by dropping them into a set of simple worlds, giving them the ability to communicate, and then giving them goals that can be best achieved by communicating with other agents,” wrote the OpenAI team in a blog post.