[This Sky News story from March presents an interesting ‘case study’ that illustrates the potential impacts of presence experiences with AI chatbots. It also includes some analysis by a London-based couples therapist. See the original version for 11 more images including some chat excerpts. –Matthew] ‘I fell in love with my AI girlfriend – and it saved my marriage’ A man who was struggling to support his depressed wife says his AI girlfriend has given him the love he needed to keep their family together. By Alexa Phillips, news reporter March 6, 2022 A man who had been planning a…

[This story from Horsetalk describes an unusual application of presence-evoking technology to provide hippotherapy, which the American Hippotherapy Association says “refers to how occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech-language pathology professionals use evidence-based practice and clinical reasoning in the purposeful manipulation of equine movement as a therapy tool to engage sensory, neuromotor and cognitive systems to promote functional outcomes.” A quick web search indicates that there are already many types of horse-riding simulators (e.g., from Navi-IT), but the one in this story, and the new study in the journal Designs, was created specifically for children with cerebral palsy. See the…

[Technology has brought us far from the classic 1977 short film “Powers of Ten” by Charles and Ray Eames. This story from North Carolina State University describes the Scale Worlds virtual environment being developed to help students better understand size and scale in science by providing vivid, interactive experiences that humans can’t have with objects in the nonmediated world (the story also reviews some other available tools less likely to evoke presence). See the original version for a 1:48 minute video, and for more on “the broad spectrum of frameworks and attitudes towards scale” see the website of the June…

[As the excellent technology writer Mike Elgan reports in this story from Protocol, both video and audio deepfake technologies are already commonly used by a variety of fraudsters in remote hiring and will represent an increasingly serious threat as the ability to fool employers with deepfakes improves. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: z_wei/iStock/Getty Images Plus; Protocol] You just hired a deepfake. Get ready for the rise of imposter employees. New technology — plus the pandemic remote work trend — is helping fraudsters use someone else’s identity to get a job. By Mike Elgan, a journalist, opinion columnist and author August 22, 2022…

[Food Safety News reports on an unusual application of presence-evoking technology to simulate a free-range environment for hens, which a study shows can reduce their stress levels and increase their resistance to disease (though it also raises ethical questions about only simulating better treatment of many kinds of animals). –Matthew] [Image: Figure 1 from “Exposure to a Virtual Environment Induces Biological and Microbiota Changes in Onset-of-Lay Hens.” Representative pictures of Virtual Reality (VR) outside (A,B) and inside (C) of the chickens’ Pens. VR images were projected onto the vinyl projector screens placed against each pen wall in the VR group only.]…

[This may reach you after today’s NASA launch but I’m sure replays of the innovative VR presentation described in this story from The Hollywood Reporter (which explicitly mentions presence), will be available afterwards. For more on viewing options, see coverage in Space.com and see the extended excerpt from a story in The Debrief that follows below for discussion of “how this may be just the beginning of how events are viewed remotely going forward.” –Matthew] [Image: A look at NASA’s Artemis I rocket. Credit: Courtesy of Felix & Paul Studios] Artemis I Launch: How an Emmy-Winning Team is Prepping a…