[Just as there’s irony in our travelling to conferences to discuss technology-based illusions of being there together, and publishing our manuscripts about vivid presence experiences with few or no images (or videos, etc.), I wish there were more news stories about presence that went beyond text and photos. Here are links to two recent examples that do. In the first, “Empathy 101,“ a “comic journalist“ explains how medical schools are using a variety of technologies including virtual reality to increase students’ understanding of and respect for the experiences of their patients. A short description of the piece from The Journalist’s…

[A new system developed by researchers at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) combines non-invasive EEG measurement and artificial intelligence to translate a person’s silent thoughts into text, offering the prospect of practical, accessible, and seamless presence experiences that help those unable to speak because of illness or injury, and revolutionize the way we interact with technologies including prosthetics, robots and many others. See the original version of this story or follow the link to YouTube below for the 4:29 minute demonstration video. A pre-publication version of the NeurIPS conference paper is available on ArXiv. Coverage from Singularity Hub provides additional…

[This essay from the Council on Foreign Relations blog considers the critically important implications of increasingly effective and common presence illusions. See the Deepfakes, Synthetic Media and Generative AI page of the WITNESS website for much more information. –Matthew] [Image: Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, waits to give his speech against the Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access oil pipeline during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland on September 20, 2016. Credit: Denis Balibouse/Reuters] To Protect Democracy in the Deepfake Era, We Need to Bring in the Voices of Those Defending…

[This Design TAXI story about a new funded Kickstarter product from holographic display company Looking Glass describes what sounds like a step forward in the creation of accessible, multifaceted presence experiences. See the original story for more images, animated gifs and the company’s 2:31 minute promotional video (also available on YouTube). See the product’s Kickstarter page for more information, and for a more objective take see coverage in The Verge. –Matthew] You Can Now Make Little Portable Hologram Friends And Talk To Them Too By Mikelle Leo December 6, 2023 If only you had a friend to talk to at…

[Especially for rail enthusiasts like me, this press release from the UK’s Network Rail provides a vivid example of the value of presence-evoking technologies. It reports on the opening of a (free) virtual version of an iconic piece of railroad technology, the Birmingham New Street Station’s Power Signal Box, which was used to direct trains from 1965 until Christmas Eve of 2022. See the original press release for instructions on how to navigate the virtual tour, along with nine more images and two videos. For more on what it was like to work at the Power Signal Box, watch a…

[We don’t have Star Trek’s holodeck technology yet, but a new tool developed at the University of Pennsylvania expands the abilities of artificial intelligence in ways that take us closer. With it, we can generate not just text, sounds, images, and video but 3D environments. Some of the details and implications are described in this story from Tom’s Guide, where the original includes an embedded 15 second video and a second image. See the project’s website for more information. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: University of Pennsylvania] The Holodeck is here – new AI can generate an entire virtual world with a…

[An interesting interdisciplinary project at Virginia Tech is using presence evoked by virtual reality to help students design more sustainable buildings while learning about the architecture, history and culture of the Middle East. See the original story from the university for a 1:44 minute video. –Matthew] [Image: Mohamed Ali, a graduate student in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design at Virginia Tech, uses a VR headset in the Interior Design VR Lab. Credit: Luke Hayes] Virtual reality transports designers into the past for sustainable solutions to heat By Lindsey Byars December 14, 2023 The United States experienced record high…

[Stories about a grieving parent or partner working to create a digital simulation of a loved one who has died are not new. But according to this story from AFP via France 24, creating presence after death is become particularly common, and a “booming” industry, in China. And the phenomenon isn’t limited to separation due to death or to specific technologies: The simulated humans “range from those who have died to living parents unable to spend time with their children and – controversially – a heartbroken woman’s ex-boyfriend. Clients can even hold video calls with a staff member whose face…

[A new study by researchers at the University of Bath and published in the 2023 CHI Conference proceedings explored the separate and combined contributions to presence of visual realism, field of view, emotions (fear and happiness) and apparent agency in virtual reality games. Details and the interesting findings are in the press release from the University below; see the original version for a 1:13 minute video (also available on Vimeo), and follow the link to the study for more details and supplementary materials. –Matthew] VR users need an emotional connection to virtual worlds, not better graphics – study finds Being…

[This essay from CleanTechnica recaps the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on the use of remote work and the “idiotic battle over remote vs. in-person work.” The author points out some of the many benefits of remote work and suggests (tele)presence-enhancing solutions to address some of the negative effects. See the original version for a second image and the Lex Fridman-Mark Zuckerberg interview (also available on YouTube). –Matthew] VR Telepresence Takes More Anti-Remote Excuses Away By Jennifer Sensiba November 29, 2023 Over the last couple of years, I’ve been chronicling the idiotic battle over remote vs in-person work. The pandemic and…

[With its latest software update, Apple has enabled anyone with an iPhone 15 Pro to record in a new three-dimensional video format it calls Spatial Video and play the video in 3D on Apple’s soon-to-be-released Vision Pro mixed reality headset (or in 2D anywhere). While the author of this story from CNET doesn’t use the term, he provides a first-person report on the new format in which he describes a vivid presence experience. And while the equipment is still prohibitively expensive for most people, the advancements mean more people will be able to easily create vivid, presence-evoking recordings of their…

[This TechCrunch story provides a vivid example of the rapid evolution of presence-evoking technologies: the use of AI to create full-motion deepfake (or ‘dancefake’) video from a single image. See the original story for a 2:26 minute demonstration video (also available on YouTube). –Matthew] [Image: Source: Know Your Meme] ‘Animate Anyone’ heralds the approach of full-motion deepfakes By Devin Coldewey December 4, 2023 As if still-image deepfakes aren’t bad enough, we may soon have to contend with generated videos of anyone who dares to put a photo of themselves online: with Animate Anyone, bad actors can puppeteer people better than…