[Even if I wasn’t one of the many Americans horrified by the nation’s current president, I’d agree with the negative assessments of Disney’s new animatronic version. This story from Quartz (which includes tweets, more images and two videos) reviews the long history of the Hall of Presidents attraction and other failed attempts to produce satisfying, realistic replications of the 45 famous men despite the evolution of technology. –Matthew] Donald Trump and the Hall of Presidents would like to welcome you to your nightmares By Molly Rubin December 19, 2017 Yea, though we walk through the shadow of the uncanny valley,…

[The feature described in this widely-cited story from Gizmodo should make Siri seem more human and thus evoke more medium-as-social-actor presence. The original story includes the patent document, also available from the US Patent Office. Developers can already make Amazon’s Alexa whisper and use other speech skills that make “her” seem more human, as reported earlier this year by TechCrunch (The Verge has a 0:42 minute sample). –Matthew] Apple Wants to Patent a Voice Assistant That Knows When to Whisper Back By Harrison Weber December 14, 2017 Sometimes it feels like we’re inching closer to a future like the movie…

[This story from Quartz highlights our desire to bring realistic simulated versions of objects and stories from popular fiction into our reality via presence-evoking technologies. The original story includes more information, more images and three videos. The reviews of the Lenovo Star Wars: Jedi Challenges AR headset (available from Best Buy) have been positive, for example see the detailed review from Extreme Tech. –Matthew] Bringing the lightsaber from Star Wars—the ultimate toy—to life By Ashley Rodriguez December 15, 2017 Like many American children of his generation, Mike Goslin grew up watching Star Wars. He saw the first movie in theaters…

[The 17 minute documentary included in this story from Discover (and available directly from MEL Films) is a compelling exploration of how virtual reality has helped convict one Nazi War criminal and will be a valuable tool in future trials and the broader task of preserving cultural memory. –Matthew] Virtual Reality Can Help Convict Nazi War Criminals By Jeremy Hsu | December 14, 2017 During World War II, Reinhold Hanning served as a guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp where more than 1.1 million people were killed by Nazi Germany. More than 70 years later, a virtual recreation of Auschwitz helped…

[There’s some skepticism in press coverage of the conceptual plans outlined in this blog post from Airbnb (e.g., in Quartz), but the trend is clearly toward the increasing use of presence-evoking technologies in travel-related industries. –Matthew] Developing the Next Realities for Travel By Airbnb / December 11 2017 At Airbnb, we build technology to push our mission forward to empower guests, hosts, and local communities. Technology powers everything we do—from online interactions on our platform to offline connections in homes, on trips and with different communities across the globe. Technology allows us to increase real-world connections and create more authentic,…

[The perils of presence – “[W]e’re on the verge of living in a world where it’s trivially easy to fabricate believable videos of people doing and saying things they never did. Even having sex.” – is the focus of this story from Motherboard. For more on the Nvidia software see coverage from MIT Technology Review via ISPR Presence News. –Matthew]   AI-Assisted Fake Porn Is Here and We’re All F**ked Someone used an algorithm to paste the face of ‘Wonder Woman’ star Gal Gadot onto a porn video, and the implications are terrifying. Samantha Cole December 11, 2017 There’s a video…