[Some of the stories about Elon Musk’s announcement that his company is creating a humanoid robot (e.g., in The Washington Post and The Hill) just describe the Tesla AI Day presentation. Others focus on the potential of Tesla Bots to help us explore Mars (Business Insider) or revolutionize health care (Forbes). The CNET story below at least includes an acknowledgement of the ambitiousness of just producing the robot as described, while other stories are more skeptical (Ars Technica), analyze and refute each of Musk’s claims (IEEE Spectrum), or dismiss the whole effort as a strategic distraction from Tesla’s current problems…

[Facebook just hosted a press demonstration of its new virtual reality meeting app Horizon Workrooms; the report below from Engadget describes what it was like. Stories in The Verge, CNBC, CNET, VentureBeat, and to a lesser degree, Wired and CNN, provide more personal observations and assessments from the reporters who attended. The New York Times provides a nice summary of the last few decades of developments in VR and concludes with this: “At the Workrooms event with reporters this week, Mr. Zuckerberg spoke but had to leave at one point and rejoin the room because his digital avatar’s mouth was…

[Fast Company reports on how scientists are using virtual reality, and both spatial and social presence, to collaborate in the work to identify effective drug treatments for COVID-19. See the original story for a 14:33 minute video and for coverage of related efforts see a November 2020 story in Drug Target Review and a June 2018 post in ISPR Presence News. –Matthew] These scientists are using virtual reality to develop COVID-19 treatments Looking at molecules in 3D arms scientists with important information that’s hard to glean from traditional 2D formats. By Ruth Reader August 3, 2021 Last year, when Italy…

[A new website for the film Reminiscence lets users create and share a trailer that incorporates a deepfake of the viewer using only a single uploaded photograph. The first short story from SlashGear below describes the process and the film (which at this writing has a 7.8/10 rating at IMDb) and the second story from Protocol provides details about the technology and company behind the interactive, personalized trailer. –Matthew] [Image: Source: DDay] Warner Bros Reminiscence site uses deepfake tech to put you in the trailer By Brittany A. Roston August 14, 2021 The soon-to-be-released science fiction movie starring Huge Jackman,…

[Yes please. It’s not clear when or even if it’ll happen but as this CNET story notes, a holodeck-like recreation of the entire USS Enterprise would please die-hard fans of the Star Trek franchise. See the original story for more pictures and a 6:11 minute video (also available via YouTube). The official press release is available from PR Newswire and, with lots of pictures, on the OTOY website. See also coverage in Variety. There have been several efforts to recreate the experience of being on the USS Enterprise, including the Star Trek: Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, New York;…

[Nvidia created a virtual version of its CEO to give part of a keynote speech, as reported in this PC Magazine story. Despite the after-the-fact critique of the realism of the illusion, it’s notable that many people either initially believed it or thought the doppelganger gave the entire speech when it was just a short segment (a VICE story helpfully says “if you jump to this part of the presentation you can see [Jensen] Huang magically disappear and his kitchen explode into multiple different 3D models). And even the PC Magazine story notes that “Given the ongoing advancements in technology,…