[This detailed report from VentureBeat highlights the serious damage that can result from having AI-based communication media technologies emulate, and be perceived as, social actors. Follow the links and see coverage from Yahoo! News for more information. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: VentureBeat made with Midjourney] OpenAI overrode concerns of expert testers to release sycophantic GPT-4o By Carl FranzenMay 2, 2025 It’s been a bit of a topsy-turvy week for the number one generative AI company in terms of users. OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, released and then withdrew an updated version of the underlying multimodal (text, image, audio) large language model (LLM)…

[A new resource for businesses deploying AI-based chatbots turns recent scientific research into practical recommendations. While presence isn’t explicitly mentioned in this story from Knowledge at Wharton (“A business journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania”), the goal of the project is “to help firms build a better chatbot by understanding the psychological factors at play when customers interact with ‘a nonhuman agent.’” Visit the Wharton Blueprint for Effective Chatbots for detailed information. –Matthew] Tired of Chatbots? Here’s How They Could Improve AI-powered chatbots are being deployed by companies to handle everything from booking travel to helping…

[The film project described in this story from The Hollywood Reporter sounds like it’ll be of interest to those who study or create presence experiences (and anyone who, like me, is a fan of the Netflix series Russian Doll or the Peacock series Poker Face. More details from a story in Decrypt follow below and for more quotes from the principals, see coverage in IndieWire. –Matthew] [Image: Natasha Lyonne, Brit Marling, and Jaron Lanier. Source: IndieWire] Natasha Lyonne Set to Make Feature Directorial Debut With AI Film — With Help From Jaron Lanier (Exclusive) The actress and the tech pioneer…

[Although it may not ever become legal to send your AI lawyer to defend you in court, an early-days version of the presence-evoking technology is already available and, as this AP story reports, a plaintiff in New York has already made the attempt. You can watch what happened on YouTube. Note the links below to stories about related applications of presence in the legal context. –Matthew] [Image: This screenshot from a video labeled as a March 26, 2025 live stream video on the YouTube channel of the Appellate division of the First Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the…

[This essay from SAPIENS describes a fascinating, important and inspiring application of presence by a team of curators, anthropologists, and heritage professionals who are “leveraging 3D and immersive technologies to enable Liberians to intimately experience and interpret Liberian cultural objects that have been dispersed around the world.” A Liberian educator and collaborator quoted near the end describes the project’s impact this way: “VR technology is not just a new experience but a theater of our sacred past… It brings our nearly forgotten cultural identity and images into the present.” See the original version of the essay for four more images.…

[A research team from Public University of Navarra (UPNA) in Spain has developed a 3D hologram system likely to evoke greater presence because it allows users to manipulate projected objects not with a 3D mouse but directly with their hands. The system is described in the story below from The Debrief, where the original version includes a second image and a 2:31 minute video (also available on YouTube). For more information, a longer video, and a link to the team’s open source paper, see the UPNA website. –Matthew] Video: Interactive 3D Hologram Allows Users to Manipulate Virtual Objects with Their…

[Presence-evoking technologies have frequently been used to simulate, and so help other people understand, what it’s like to have a variety of physical and mental health conditions. The story below from Prevention describes a novel project that uses generative artificial intelligence to help those with a group of rare blood cancers share their experiences. As is often the case, the company behind the project, and in this case the story, has a vested interest, but “The Unseen Journey” is of particular interest to me because I have one of the cancers, polycythemia vera (luckily, my symptoms so far have been…

[This essay from MIT Technology Review compares the appeal and potential dangers of algorithm-based social media that compete in the “attention economy,” to the even greater appeal and dangers of artificially intelligent companions that evoke medium-as-social-actor presence, arguing that lawmakers so far seem unprepared to effectively address the latter. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/MITTR | Photos Getty] AI companions are the final stage of digital addiction, and lawmakers are taking aim Designed to be the perfect person—always available, never critical—AI companions are hooking people deeper than social media ever could. They make the attention economy look like…

[As this story from Elon University in North Carolina notes, creating a planetarium that displays a star-filled sky in virtual reality isn’t new, but Elon senior Aubrey Spicola is extending the concept by using mixed rather than virtual reality to recreate the experience of attending an interactive instructor-led planetarium session. See the original version of the story for a second image; more coverage is available in an October 2024 story from Elon; for more about Aubrey and her work see her LinkedIn page. –Matthew] [Image: Senior Honors Fellow Aubrey Spicola tests her Honors Thesis at Innovation Hall on March 24.…

[As many of us know well, the end of a semester at a college or university can be a particularly stressful time for students (and others). In addition to counseling and therapy dogs, presence experiences via virtual reality may be a helpful tool in managing the stress. The story below from Penn State University describes a simple but apparently successful example. –Matthew] [Image: First-year student Manan Jain uses a Meta headset to try the Liminal Virtual Reality experience. The virtual reality headset is in the Center for Academic Achievement and is available for use by all Penn State Beaver students.…

[A doctoral student in Australia has designed a new program that uses presence-evoking virtual reality to train volunteer ambulance officers and paramedics to manage out-of-hospital births. An excerpt from coverage by MobiHealthNews follows the short news release below from Edith Cowan University (where the original version includes a second image). –Matthew] [Image: PhD candidate Michella Hill has developed a virtual reality training program for volunteer ambulance officers and paramedics to enhance confidence and competency in managing birth emergencies before arriving at hospital] Cutting-edge VR training to equip first responders for birth emergencies A new virtual reality (VR) training program developed…

[This forceful essay in The Conversation by a cognitive neuroscientist captures what to me is most fascinating and potentially dangerous about rapidly evolving artificial intelligence technology: its ability to mimic human cognition and social cues that evoke compelling medium-as-social-actor presence illusions. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Kundra/Shutterstock] We need to stop pretending AI is intelligent – here’s how By Guillaume Thierry, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Bangor UniversityApril 14, 2025 We are constantly fed a version of AI that looks, sounds and acts suspiciously like us. It speaks in polished sentences, mimics emotions, expresses curiosity, claims to feel compassion, even dabbles in what…