[Researchers continue to look for a practical and effective way to add smells, and taste, to presence experiences. The Scientific American story below describes a new effort that solves some long-standing problems, and the excerpt from coverage in MIT Technology Review that follows it provides more details. See the new article in Nature Communications for more information and three short videos. –Matthew]

[Image: The first part of Figure 4a in “Soft, miniaturized, wireless olfactory interface for virtual reality“: “A demonstration of the skin-integrated Device 1 in displaying olfaction feedback for providing an immersive experience to users during movie watching. Here, a girl in the movie is smelling a flower… while the watcher… smell[s] [a] floral odor by wearing the olfaction interface.”]

Virtual Reality System Lets You Stop and Smell the Roses

A wireless device worn on the face or lip can produce fragrances such as lavender and green tea in a virtual world

By Simon Makin
May 9, 2023

Virtual reality is already widespread in entertainment and is starting to spread to fields ranging from education to health care.… read more. “New wireless system worn on face or lip produces fragrances in a virtual world”

[In a logical step to increase our experiences of social presence when we interact with artificial intelligence, instead of having to type and read text, the Call Annie app described in this story from ZDNet lets you have an audio-visual conversation (in the form of a faux video call) with a virtual avatar of the AI software. See also a story from KOIN 6 in Portland, Oregon that features a 6:17 minute television interview with Bubbles, another avatar for ChatGPT; you can have a visual conversation with “her” too, here. –Matthew]

[Image: Credit: Screenshots by Lance Whitney/ZDNET]

This free iPhone app lets you video chat with a ChatGPT-powered digital avatar

The Call Annie app adds a visual twist to your AI chats by displaying a virtual avatar that not only answers questions but engages you in personal conversation.

By Lance Whitney, Contributor
May 1, 2023

With ChatGPT and other AI chat services, you typically type a question or request and then read the results on the screen.… read more. “The next step: App lets you video chat with a ChatGPT-powered digital avatar”

[The new free iOS app Hotshot uses image generating AI to create photos of users and anyone in their contacts doing “anything.” If the images it produces aren’t convincingly real now it’s hard to imagine they won’t be soon. The story below from Futurism, supplemented by excerpts from The Chainsaw, provides details. Wonderful Engineering echoes other coverage with the statement that the app “raises important questions regarding ownership, consent, and authenticity. Genuine human connections cannot ultimately be supplanted by manufactured experiences and visuals.” Mosaic ML has an interview with the co-founders of the company behind the app, Natural Synthetics, that includes this:

“What was the inspiration for your Hotshot app?

Aakash Sastry (Natural Synthetics Co-Founder & CEO): We’ve been building different social apps since 2012. John was building visual communication apps before I met him, and I was building a video chat app where you would be live on camera as soon as you opened it.… read more. “New AI app makes photos of you hanging out with your friends”

[A new device developed by researchers at the University of Chicago enhances presence illusions by making the sensations of jumping or falling in virtual reality more realistic, as reported in this short story from New Scientist. See the original version of the story for a 41 second video (also available on YouTube). You can also watch the 10-minute presentation recorded at the CHI 2023 conference on YouTube, read the published paper in the CHI Proceedings (where it includes three different videos), and find more presence-related information on Professor Pedro Lopes’ website. –Matthew]

Mechanical backpack boosts the sensation of jumping in virtual reality

A VR accessory called JumpMod can make users feel like they are jumping higher or landing harder, just by moving a weight on their back

By Alex Wilkins
May 5, 2023

A mechanical backpack can enhance the sensation of jumping or falling in virtual reality by sliding a weight up or down.… read more. “Mechanical backpack boosts the sensation of jumping in virtual reality”

[As a decades-long fan of Star Trek, I couldn’t not post this news about a new online recreation of the bridge of every iteration of the U.S.S. Enterprise. This story from Gizmodo captures the appeal of the spatial, if not social, presence experiences the virtual recreations are said to offer. Coverage from The Verge adds this detail:

“The Roddenberry Archive and OTOY say they’ll be adding the voice of Majel Roddenberry, who played several roles, including the ship’s computer, to the archive ‘in the coming months.’ Her son Rod says that in 2008, Majel ‘meticulously recorded her voice phonetically, with the intent to preserve it for some future technology to bring it back to life.’”

See the referenced news release for many more pictures and four videos. –Matthew]

[Image: Credit: Screenshot by Sean Hollister; graphics by Roddenberry Archive. Source: The Verge]

‘The Bridge Is Yours:’ You Can Now Virtually Visit Every Star Trek Enterprise Bridge

The Roddenberry Archive worked with Paramount to recreate 3D models of nearly every single starship bridge featured in the Star Trek show and movies.… read more. “‘The bridge is yours:’ You can now virtually visit every Star Trek Enterprise bridge”

[It’s amazing how many applications there are for technologies that evoke (in this case spatial) presence. This story is from The Fabricator, where it includes two more images. –Matthew]

[Image: In this augmented reality gas metal arc welding setup, a student lays down a virtual bead.]

How augmented reality is being used to train the next generation of welders

AR can change how welding students learn the trade before they strike their first real arc

By Tim Heston
May 1, 2023

It’s a black art. I used to hear that a lot on fab shop tours—code for something that took years to learn and only the talented few truly mastered. Why, exactly? Sometimes it had to do with the nature of the skill and the worker’s tactile and visual experience welding a workpiece. If something went awry, they’d try again.… read more. “How augmented reality (and presence) is being used to train the next generation of welders”

[This NPR story describes how easy it is becoming to create a deepfake video of yourself or someone else, and the dangers these presence-evoking videos (in which the hard-to-detect use of technology distorts our perceptions and understanding of reality) pose for us as individuals and society. The original version of the story includes two embedded tweets with videos. See also the follow-up NPR story “AI-Gnerated Deepfakes are Moving Fast. Policymakers Can’t Keep Up” by the same author. In “Chinese Company Lets You Make a Deepfake ‘Digital Human’ for $145” PetaPIxel reports on how you can create a deepfake with even less technical expertise. And FirstShowing has a description and trailer for a new satirical horror film on this topic called Caviar; here’s a quote from Director Jacob Michael King:

“Western civilization is approaching a point at which our shared narratives break down.… read more. “It takes a few dollars and 8 minutes to create a deepfake. And that’s only the start”

[This essay from the TechTalks blog differentiates the medium-as-social-actor presence illusion provided by current conversational, large language model-based artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT from potential future AI systems that are capable of human-like “general intelligence.” In the latter case, the presence illusion will become a reality accurately perceived. –Matthew]

ChatGPT is impressive, but it may slow the emergence of AGI

By Charles Simon
April 13, 2023

ChatGPT seems to be everywhere. From in-depth reports in highly respected technology publications to gushing reviews in mainstream media, ChatGPT has been hailed as the next big thing in artificial intelligence, and with good reason.

As a developer resource, ChatGPT is simply outstanding, particularly when compared to searching existing resources such as Stack Overflow (which are undoubtedly included in GPT’s data model). Ask ChatGPT a software question and you get a summary of available web solutions and some sample code that can be displayed in the language you need.… read more. “ChatGPT is impressive, but it may slow the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence”

[BBC News reports on a new effort to use virtual reality and presence to provide victims of crime the experience of being in court before they have to appear in person to give testimony. The goal is to reduce their anxiety about the often overwhelming and even retraumatizing court experience. See the original version of the story for two more images and a 2:27 minute video, and for more information see the press release from the Scottish Government and Immersonal’s website, which includes a second video report from BBC News.  –Matthew]

Virtual reality used to address victim court trauma

By Niall McCracken, BBC News NI
April 30, 2023

Virtual reality is being used to help victims of crime prepare for giving evidence in court.

Belfast-based tech company Immersonal designed the software that is being rolled out across 52 Scottish courts in the next year.… read more. “Virtual reality used to address victim court trauma”

[The results of a new neuroimaging study support the idea that the more vividly we imagine a stimulus or perceive one that is “virtual” (mediated by technology), the more likely our brain will struggle to determine whether it is real. The news release from University College London below summarizes the study and is followed by two key paragraphs from the published journal article. –Matthew]

[Image: A graphical representation of the supported hypothesis. Part of Figure 1b in the article “Subjective signal strength distinguishes reality from imagination”]

Humans struggle to differentiate imagination from reality

April 21, 2023

The more vividly a person imagines something, the more likely it is that they believe it’s real, finds a new study by UCL researchers.

The research, published in Nature Communications, involved over 600 participants who took part in an online experiment, where they were asked to imagine images of alternating black and white lines while looking at a computer screen.… read more. “Study: People judge whether something is real or imagined based on how vividly they experience it”