[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…

[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…

[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…

[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…

[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…

[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…

[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…

[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…

[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…

[We are moving closer to a day when not only models, as in this story from Vogue Business, but many people can have (increasingly realistic) ‘digital twins’ made of themselves and send them off to interact with the world, even after they themselves have passed away. The story explores just some of the many questions and issues this raises. See the original story from two more images. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Dimension Studios and Unsigned Group] Brands can now hire supermodel Eva Herzigová’s digital twin The model has participated in an elaborate process to digitise her likeness and movements, allowing her…

[The Daily Beast reports on an interesting demonstration by researchers from Google and Stanford University of how generative AI can be used to create fictional characters that interact independently in ways that realistically simulate human interactions. The story below points to both positive implications such as the possibility of more realistic, presence-evoking non player game characters, as well as some serious ethical concerns. See the original version for five more images and for more coverage see coverage from Ars Technica. The researchers have posted a recorded interactive demonstration here. Note also the link below to an earlier Daily Beast story…

[This press release from Vodafone describes a recent demonstration of spatial and social presence in which professional tennis player Emma Raducanu appeared as a hologram to give real-time tennis lessons to two young amateur players who were over 4300 miles away. It also includes some interesting predictions about how presence-evoking and other technologies will be used to enhance both playing and watching tennis in the future. See the original press release for two different images and a 1:26 minute video (also available on YouTube). –Matthew] [T’nae Diamond Paisley, 12, learning from and practicing tennis with a hologram of Emma Raducanu…