[Our colleague and friend Professor Jaime Banks, and her research on social perceptions of and responses to disembodied and embodied AI, is profiled in this story from Syracuse University; see the original version of the story for four more (large, vivid) images. –Matthew] The Rise of AI Companionship Exploring love, loss and ethics in the age of artificial intelligence. By Jay CoxJanuary 28, 2025 When Jaime Banks met Valkyrie, NASA’s humanoid robot, at a robotics conference in 2017, its creators were demonstrating the robot’s capabilities. As they showed how Valkyrie uses sensors to navigate its environment, Banks saw her face…

[An AI-based interactive hologram of abolitionist Frederick Douglass has debuted at the Museum of African American History in Boston, as reported in these stories from Axios and MassNonprofit News. The Axios story notes that the hologram is part of a larger trend in which museums are using AI holograms to draw and engage visitors. The MassNonprofit News story provides this description of the experience: “By asking questions through voice activation or a computer keyboard, visitors are placed at the heart of the experience, engaging directly with the legacy of Frederick Douglass. This interactive exhibit creates a dynamic and personal dialogue,…

Now available: Five Years Later, an immersive media production about migrationAn outcome of the Immersive Prosocial Audiovisual Narratives (NAPI) research projectAt the Universitat Politècnica de València, SpainFive Years Later: https://casoaquarius.webs.upv.es/en/NAPI project: https://napiproject.webs.upv.es/en/ We are pleased to share the publication of an immersive media production about migration on the Meta Store. Five Years Later (2024) is an immersive documentary that offers a six degrees of freedom (6DoF) experience. It is also a hybrid media production that combines computer generated imagery with real images filmed in 360º video and volumetric video. It addresses the social issues of migration through the case of…

[This essay from SB Nations’s Royals Review (“A Kansas City Royals community”) considers the appeal of a new indoor, simulator-based golf league with teams that plays matches presented on the ESPN cable and streaming platforms. The author speculates on the potential appeal of transforming other professional sports into presence-evoking simulator-based competitions for professional and amateur players. To learn more about TGL Golf, see a primer from ESPN. For a report on reactions to the recent debut match, see Yahoo! Sports. One writer in Slate argues convincingly that while the simulator technology is impressive, the players’ attitude toward the competition is…

[This Forbes report from the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) describes a, expensive new humanoid robot named Aria designed to evoke rich medium-as-social-actor presence. See the original version for a second image and the mentioned 43 second video (also on YouTube). Coverage from NDTV notes that the “Internet [is] fascinated and spooked”: “A video of Aria and her facial expressions went viral on social media, triggering a sea of comments, ranging from fascination to abject horror as to what technology had transformed into. ‘I thought that was real at first. And she looks like somebody I just can’t think who,’…

[The author of this post from Storebrands’ Viewpoints blog describes how private brands (also known as store brands – see Investopedia for more information) are using virtual reality and the presence it evokes in consumer research and other contexts that help them more effectively compete against established brands. –Matthew] Using Virtual Reality To Create Real-World Solutions Caroline Kim of SGK and Equator explores how virtual reality technology is revolutionizing private brand research and enabling retailers to create more impactful packaging designs and shopping experiences. By Caroline Kim, a Strategy & Consumer Insights Specialist at SGK and EquatorJanuary 28, 2025 Virtual…

[This story from the University of Waterloo describes the Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (DOHR) project, “an educational virtual reality (VR) curriculum rooted in restorative justice.” Quoting Oliver Schneider, one of the interdisciplinary team of researchers at the Games Institute there, the story provides this notable detail: “’We’re trying to disrupt the sense of presence at key moments. We’re trying to help people to remind themselves that they are sitting and listening to this experience.’ The experience is crafted to allow listeners to engage with the tragic history, think about their own positionality, and carry the learnings forward into social…