International Society
for Presence Research

Author: Matthew Lombard

  • Scammers are using artificial intelligence to sound more like family members in distress

    Published:

    [The alarming trend toward a world in which we can’t trust any of the mediated messages we encounter is illustrated vividly in this story from The Washington Post about scammers using easily-created AI voices of people’s loved ones to trick them out of their money (see the original story for a second picture). A December 2021 ISPR Presence News post described isolated cases in which business executives were targeted by voice scammers and an August 2022 post highlighted how scammers are using deepfakes to get hired by businesses for “money, espionage, access to company systems and unearned career advancement.” But…

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  • Call: “Extended Reality as a Gateway to the Metaverse” at IEEE MetroXRAINE 2023

    Published:

    Call for Papers Special Session on: “EXTENDED REALITY AS A GATEWAY TO THE METAVERSE: PRACTICES, THEORIES, TECHNOLOGIES AND APPLICATIONS” 2023 IEEE International Conference on Metrology for eXtended Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Neural Engineering (IEEE MetroXRAINE 2023) October 25-27, 2023 Milan, Italy Session: https://metroxraine.org/special-session-17 Conference: https://metroxraine.org/ Submission deadline for abstracts (1-2 pages): March 15, 2023 Final paper submission deadline: April 30, 2023 SPECIAL SESSION DESCRIPTION The fast development of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) solutions over the last few years are transforming how people interact, work, and communicate. The eXtended Reality (XR) term encloses all those…

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  • Professor’s VR research looks to pave way for more equitable police interrogations of young adults

    Published:

    [The story below from Virginia Commonwealth University describes what sounds like a valuable project that uses presence experiences and a variety of measurement tools to better understand perceptions of, and improve the legality and morality of, police interrogations. See the original version for an additional picture. –Matthew] Professor’s virtual reality research looks to pave way for more equitable police interrogations of young adults What can VR reveal about police interrogations? A Wilder School criminal justice associate professor, a two-time School of Business alum, a School of the Arts instructor and a theatre student are working together to find out. By…

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  • Call: “Extended Realities for Learning” issue of The Electronic Journal of e-Learning (EJEL)

    Published:

    [Important note: I usually avoid posting Calls for Papers that involve the requirement that authors pay a fee for submission and/or publication but do so when the topic is particularly relevant to the presence community. In these cases, as with the Call below, I add an explicit note near the top of the post specifying that there is a fee (see the last line below for details). For more information about these fees, see AJE Scholar’s “Understanding Submission and Publication Fees” and Wikipedia’s entry on Article Processing Charges. –Matthew] Call for Papers The Electronic Journal of e-Learning Special Issue on…

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  • Remote kissing device lets users smooch anyone over the internet

    Published:

    [A new version of a “remote kissing device” is apparently providing another example of the uncanny valley, as reported in this short story from My Modern Net. CNN’s coverage includes a humorous 2:06 minute video essay. For comparison, see the December 2016 ISPR Presence News post about the less realistic “Kissenger” device. By the way, in addition to the ~$42 cost at Taobao mentioned below, at this writing the new device is selling for $107 on AliExpress and someone’s offering one on eBay for $450. –Matthew] [Image: Source: New York Post] Remote Kissing Device Lets Users Smooch Anyone Over the…

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  • Call: “Humanoid robots in healthcare: Exploring real world applications” session at IEEE RO-MAN 2023

    Published:

    Call for Papers “Humanoid Robots in Healthcare: Exploring real world applications” Special session at IEEE RO-MAN 2023: 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication August 28-31, 2023 Paradise Hotel, Busan, Korea and Online http://www.ro-man2023.org Submission deadline: March 31, 2023 Dear colleagues, I would like to invite you to submit your papers to a special session at the 32nd IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication – RO-MAN 2023 in Busan, Korea: “Humanoid Robots in Healthcare: exploring real world applications” (code 5x7h1). TOPICS Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Experiences and approaches in…

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  • A critical view: The Desert of the Virtual

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    [Drawing on a phrase from philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (and made popular in the Matrix films) this essay in Dissent raises disturbing but important concerns about humanity’s efforts to create presence-evoking immersive media “worlds.” For a related but less scathing perspective, see the new essay “Virtual Reality has arrived, but are humans ready for it?” in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences. –Matthew] [Image: A rendering of a virtual-reality party. Credit: Yagi Studio/Getty Images] The Desert of the Virtual The metaverse heralds an age in which hardly anyone still believes that tech firms can actually solve our problems.…

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  • Call: ACM SAP 2023: ACM Symposium on Applied Perception

    Published:

    Call for Papers ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (ACM SAP) August 5 and 6, 2023 Los Angeles, CA http://sap.acm.org/2023/ Deadline for abstract submission: April 14, 2023 Deadline for paper submission: April 21, 2023 The ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (ACM SAP) provides an intimate forum for researchers who combine knowledge, methods, and insights from perception research and computer science disciplines. This includes such disciplines as cognitive psychology, perceptual psychology, psychophysics, behavior-analysis, and neuroscience on the perceptual side and computer graphics, computer vision, visualization, virtual reality and human-computer interfaces on the visual computing side. The interdisciplinary focus of this conference acknowledges…

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  • What this VR pole-dancer wants you to know about the metaverse

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    [The Daily Beast story below describes one person’s experiences with an unusual application of presence-evoking virtual reality. In it ROOt explains some of the challenges and benefits of pole-dancing in VR and the author notes that “If the makers of virtual reality hardware and software could fix some of the issues that arise with pole dancing, they would inadvertently be solving concerns that a larger user base has with virtual reality.” See the original story for five videos via Tik Tok, YouTube and Twitter. –Matthew] What This VR Pole-Dancer Wants You To Know About the Metaverse Mark Zuckerberg could learn…

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  • Call: GAME-ON 2023, the 24th annual Simulation and AI in Games Conference

    Published:

    CALL FOR PAPERS GAME-ON®’2023 The 24th annual Simulation and AI in Games Conference SETU – South East Technological University (https://www.setu.ie/) Carlow, Ireland September 6-8, 2023 Organised by The European Technology Institute and SETU Sponsored by EUROSIS, AREA42, KU Leuven BIOTEC, University of Skovde, University of Žilina, and GODAN For latest information see: www.eurosis.org or https://www.eurosis.org/conf/gameon/2023/index.html Paper submission deadline: April 21, 2023 CONFERENCE AIM The aim of the 24th annual European GAME-ON® Conference (GAME-ON®’2023) on Simulation and AI in Computer Games, is to bring together researchers and game developers in order to exchange ideas on programming and programming techniques, which will…

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  • Three short presence stories

    Published:

    [Today’s post contains three very different but interesting short news stories about presence. –Matthew] [From AdNews; see the original version (or YouTube) for the 90 second ad] ‘Children Should Be Seen and Heard’ in a poignant ad industry-backed campaign Creative Agency: Zenith March 1, 2023 MissingSchool, Cocogun, Scoundrel, Rumble, UnLtd and Zenith have teamed up with their latest campaign ‘Don’t you forget about me’, to reconnect seriously sick kids with school. The integrated campaign features a rousing children’s chorus covering the ’80s hit Don’t You (Forget About Me) by the Scottish rock band Simple Minds. The ad shows sick children…

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  • Call: Free online March 3: “Interactive Realities: Bridging Complex Systems in Artificial and Natural Environments”

    Published:

    Call for Participation Interactive Realities: Bridging Complex Systems in Artificial and Natural Environments An INTERSELF workshop March 3, 2023, 09:00 – 18:30 UTC/GMT Amphitheatre of FCiências.ID (Lisbon, Portugal) & Online (Zoom) https://interselfworkshop.campus.ciencias.ulisboa.pt Deadline for registration: March 2, 2023 This workshop brings together world-leading scholars and junior researchers from philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, robotics, and computational neuroscience to address the following (non-exhaustive) key questions: What is ‘Reality’ and what is ‘Virtual Reality’? What do we gain and what do we lose by using virtual realities technologies? What is the relationship between virtual and ‘real’ realities and the human sense of self and…

    Read more: Call: Free online March 3: “Interactive Realities: Bridging Complex Systems in Artificial and Natural Environments”

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