[Hiroshima University psychologist Mayu Koike and her colleagues are studying the potential positive effects of relationships with computer generated personae; they hope to “cultivate a new field named ‘romantic anthropomorphism,’ bridging the gap between anthropomorphism and relationship science.” Interesting details are reported in this story from WebMD.  –Matthew] Loving a Fake Person: Redefining Romance for the Virtual Age By Bill Stieg December 2, 2022 When a young man finds himself falling for a 300-year-old cyborg in the 2019 sci-fi film Alita: Battle Angel, they share the following exchange: “Does it bother you,” the cyborg (Alita) asks, “that I’m not completely…

[This story from Virginia Commonwealth University describes an ideal use case for presence-evoking virtual reality: a common medical procedure that’s difficult to perform and expensive and risky to learn with human patients. The story also makes clear the importance of having an interdisciplinary university (or other) infrastructure supporting this kind of valuable project. More information is available on the website of VCU’s Launching Excellent in VR (LEVR) Center. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Karl Steinbrenner] How virtual reality training may improve ‘blind’ surgery to treat female urinary incontinence VCU’s Lauren Siff leads interdisciplinary effort to build a virtual-reality training application to help…

[The latest artificial intelligence-chatbot, ChatGPT, is impressing experts and the public but also raising serious concerns, as reported in the story below from The New York Times (where the original includes examples of chat transcripts). Coverage from Slate characterizes the progress ChatGPT represents this way: “[W]e’ve come a long way from the early days of the chatbot hype wave. Not long ago, Facebook promised these bots would be its next big platform, Microsoft pitched them as fun companions, and others raced to claim credit for leading the revolution. But these chatbots were so bad that people stopped using them.…

[This Washington Post story describes a partnership between Storyfile and Proto, two companies that create technologies to evoke presence (and which have been the subject of previous ISPR Presence News posts). The story says a new life-like hologram of Walmart founder Sam Walton at the company’s museum in Arkansas “hints at a new frontier, one in which long-dead icons mingle among us, head-spinningly erasing the line between not just virtual and real but present and past, dead and alive.” –Matthew] [Image: A hologram of Walmart founder Sam Walton holds court in front of a room in Bentonville, Ark., right before…

[A loathed and more recently loved virtual assistant built into an early version of Windows is now available on a holiday sweater (!), as reported by Mashable. –Matthew] Microsoft is selling an ugly holiday sweater featuring an OG Windows legend It’s only $75! By Alex Perry November 15, 2022 This’ll surely spice up your family’s holiday party. Ugly holiday sweaters feel like a decidedly early-2010’s trend, but that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from introducing one that’s actually pretty good. For the “low” price of $75 on the Xbox merchandise store, you can get a festive sweater depicting the OG Microsoft Office…

[This Gizmodo story is widely cited in coverage of a new tool developed by Disney Research that can more easily, quickly and economically create illusions that age and ‘de-age’ actors. Coverage from Nerdist provides this succinct summary: “Similar to the system used in The Irishman, which Netflix and ILM developed, this system doesn’t require an actor’s face to be covered in tracking dots. It also doesn’t require visual effects artists to spend weeks erasing (or adding) wrinkles in every frame. The video [in the original story and on YouTube] shows off the simple interface, where all you have to do…

[The United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC) is an inter-agency institution that “respond[s] to the learning, training and knowledge management needs of UN staff and relevant partners.” Without using the term presence, this first-person blog post describes how and why the UNSSC has shifted from offering traditional to “more immersive and experiential learning” opportunities to their clients. Follow the links within and at the bottom of the post for more information. –Matthew] Driving sustainable development and climate action through virtual reality and interactive 360-degree videos By Paulyn Duman, Knowledge Management, Communications, and Reporting Officer at the United Nations System Staff…