[Expanding presence for literary texts, a new feature from Character.AI lets users “step inside a classic novel – not just read it, but play it.“ A quick summary is provided in this story from Quasa, where the original version includes four more images. A story in Mashable takes a deeper dive, and one in Digital Trends focuses on user safety. For more information and to access the Books feature, see the company’s announcement on the Character.AI blog. –Matthew] Character AI Launches “Books” — Now You Can Step Inside Your Favorite Classic Novels By Viacheslav VasipenokApril 24, 2026 Character.AI…

[In this post from his Machine Society Substack, technology writer Mike Elgan describes new research that demonstrates what we would call medium-as-social-actor presence. The researchers find that when an AI chatbot takes longer to respond to queries, it is perceived as taking longer to think of the answer. Elgan puts it this way: “people judge AI the way they judge people. If people give a slower response, we tend to assume it’s a more thoughtful one.” Elgan argues that deliberately slowing AI response times to manipulate user perceptions in this way is unethical and encourages dangerous delusions regarding the true…

[This story from Healio describes an ongoing project to develop and test a 45-60 minute “choose your own adventure” presence-evoking virtual reality experience to reduce the anxiety of cancer patients before they undergo surgery. For more details, the original version of the story includes a 5:06 minute video, and a 4:34 minute CBC News Manitoba report about the project is available on YouTube. Although they don’t focus on the role of presence, a quick online search reveals promising results when VR is used to reduce anxiety before cardiac surgery (e.g., these three studies), elective surgery, and for both children and…

[As more people use AI to compose grammatically perfect and typo-free emails, it’s easier to detect the AI and dismiss the message as computer-generated. To counter this break in medium-as-social-actor presence, and to draw attention to the problem, a Harvard student created software that uses AI to edit your AI-generated emails to make them more likely to appear to have been written by a human (!). Details are in the story below from Livemint, where the original version includes the relevant segment of a TBPN podcast (also available on YouTube) in which the creator discusses Sinceerly. See also earlier coverage…

[A million-dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Justice is funding the development of a new presence-evoking training program for professionals who respond to reports of domestic violence. This story from George Mason University notes that a primary focus of the project, which may become a national (or international?) model, will be on developing the content of the practice scenarios. See a closely-related March 2026 story from the same source for more details. –Matthew] [VR headsets in the college’s Lab for Immersive Technologies and Simulation] $1 million U.S. Department of Justice grant will support virtual reality training for domestic violence…

[This article from Arab News describes how the trend toward experiential tourism at cultural sites requires careful use of presence-evoking technologies. As one expert in the story notes, “immersive technology allows museums to recreate the historical contexts in which artworks once existed, helping visitors better understand the environments and cultures that shaped them, [but] ‘technology is always at the service of the narrative — never the other way around.’” See the original version of the story for five more images including a detailed infographic. –Matthew] [Image: At the Louvre Abu Dhabi, researchers relied on the archeological remains of the Forum…

[Presence-evoking simulations are increasingly part of medical training, but a recent Nursing Simulation Day at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana introduced an interesting new “body swapping” feature in which students could switch roles between caregiver and patient. Details are in this story from the student-run newspaper The Observer. –Matthew] [Image: Nursing student gives clinical report to VR patient, utilizing the AI powered technology to receive real time feedback on procedures. Credit: Photo by Soledad Castellanos / The Observer] Saint Mary’s nursing program debuts new VR and disaster simulation experience The department featured its new VR simulators for students…

[This first-person report on the experience provided by a virtual reality installation about the Titanic and its sinking simultaneously captures some of the factors that enhance and degrade presence, and illustrates how a personal voice and vivid description and narrative in text can evoke a strong sense of presence as well. The story is from People, where the original includes five more images and a 52-second video trailer for Titan: Echoes From the Past (the trailer is also available on YouTube). –Matthew] [Image: Credit: SSPL/Getty] A Titanic Obsessive Reveals the Moment That Lingered While Visiting VR Recreation of the Lost…

[In the second of two posts about research with animals that expands our understanding, and possible future experiences, of presence, this story in Futurism describes how researchers created a computer model of a fruit fly’s brain and watched it match a real fly’s behavior in a simulated world. Describing a 4:17 minute video included in the original story (and available on YouTube), researcher Alex Weissner-Gross says “What you are seeing is not an animation. It is not a reinforcement learning policy mimicking biology. It is a copy of a biological brain, wired neuron-to-neuron from electron microscopy data, running in simulation,…

[In the first of two posts about research with animals that expands our understanding, and possible future experiences, of presence, this story from Road to VR describes a study in which monkeys with a brain-computer interface learned to move around in a complex virtual environment. “While the study hopes to pave the way for similar results in humans, which could unlock things like controlling electric wheelchairs, [KU Leuven researcher Peter] Janssen also believes it could allow people with paralysis to intuitively navigate virtual worlds.” See the original story for two more images and follow the links below, and read a…

[Doctoral researcher Rishi Vanukuru at the University of Colorado Boulder’s ATLAS Institute is exploring ways to evoke higher levels of presence with smartphones and tablet computers. The original version of this description of his work includes two more (and larger) images. For more information visit Rishi’s website, especially a page that includes the research team’s paper “Studying Mobile Spatial Collaboration across Video Calls and Augmented Reality” and a 1:19 minute video (which is also available on YouTube). –Matthew] Shared reality: Exploring VR-like environments with your smartphone By Michael KwolekApril 1, 2026 Virtual reality (VR) devices offer great potential for immersive…

[Upload reports on an “arguably revolutionary” approach to the long-standing problem of adding the experience of smells to presence-evoking technologies. See the original version of the story below for another image and a 28-second video. For more details and images, see the project website, which has this provocative URL: https://writetobrain.com/olfactory. –Matthew] Researchers Induce Smells With Ultrasound, No Chemical Cartridges Required A group of independent researchers built a device that can artificially induce smell using ultrasound, with no consumable cartridges required. By David HeaneyApril 15, 2026 Current virtual reality is focused on stimulating your vision and hearing, with some limited haptics…