[Members of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma are using presence-evoking virtual reality to engage audiences in the Easter story of Jesus’ resurrection. The description of the project below comes from the St. Luke’s website, which features 18 more pictures. The local television station KWTV News9 has a 1:36 minute news report, in which director Lance McDaniel says: “You know, it’s a 2,000-year-old book, and a lot of the time we keep thinking of those people as so different than us, but when you really get into it, they were human just like we are. When you…

[With so many fast-evolving technologies and different sets of users and types of applications, the meaning of telepresence, presence and related terms continues to evolve, which can create confusion. But this story from Inavate Magazine describes the latest developments in the use of technologies in the corporate world that provide “life-size,” “3-D,” “realistic” illusions of being with the people in a remote location. See the original version of the story for two more images. –Matthew] [Image: Logitech’s Project Ghost telepresence prototype. Source: New Atlas] Is ‘hologram’ tech changing the corporate world? Hologram telepresence is finding itself a new home in…

[This story from The Toronto Star explores the trends that may be behind – and the potential benefits and dangers involved with – the use of presence-evoking technologies to create physical intimacy (while some claims, e.g., about the Brain Waves XR technology, require more detailed, credible documentation, the larger concepts and issues are thought-provoking). See the original version of the story for four more images. –Matthew] Virtual reality body rub parlour offers an alternative to sex. But should we be worried about intimacy? So while the virtual world can provide a much-needed escape, there are societal and technology forces at…

[This essay from Big Think uses recent developments in conversational AI and science-fiction portrayals to warn us about the perils of a type of medium-as-social-actor presence experience in which humans emotionally bond with disembodied or even embodied human-like algorithms: “The danger is not of an AI falling in love with a human — that is a meaningless proposition. The danger comes from humans falling in love with an algorithm that behaves so much like a human that we deem it to be real, capable of feeling and reciprocating emotions.” –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Annelisa Leinbach / Big Think; Adobe Stock] What…

[This story from MIT Technology Review describes and offers a first-person report on how people are using both spatial and social presence to find sleep and company (even “cuddling”) in virtual reality. For more on this topic see the 2021 post in Ryan Schultz’ blog “Exploring sleep worlds in VRChat” and the VRchat subreddit.  –Matthew] [Image: Stephanie Arnett/MIT TR. Credit: Envato, Istock (Butter)] Inside the cozy but creepy world of VR sleep rooms Going to sleep in virtual reality can alleviate insomnia and loneliness—if you can avoid being harassed by kids. By Tanya Basu March 29, 2023 Lo-fi chill music…

[As you probably have noted, the news and commentary about the evolution of conversational AI has been accelerating. This week “Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter” (which at this writing has nearly 1900 “vetted” signatories) argued: “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research[1] and acknowledged by top AI labs.[2] As stated in the widely-endorsed Asilomar AI Principles, Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning…

[The use of presence-evoking virtual reality to practice and reduce anxiety about public speaking isn’t new, but this story from University of Hawaiʻi News describes some of the benefits as it introduces a new NSF-funded VR Lab at the university developed specifically for helping faculty and students communicate more effectively. See the original story for two more pictures and a 1:25 minute video (also available on YouTube), and see the Lab’s website for a 4:20 minute first-person video (also on YouTube) that nicely illustrates the experience of visiting the Lab. A 1:51 minute 2022 HTC VIVE TALK provides more general…

[This story from Motherboard describes a worrisome application of the fast-evolving ability of AI to generate convincingly realistic presence illusions, in this case of important but completely fictional events. Technology expert Shelly Palmer posted this reaction to the story on his blog: “In George Orwell’s 1984, the book’s hero, Winston Smith, is a minor party functionary living in a London that is still shattered by a nuclear war that took place not long after World War II. He belongs to the Outer Party, and his job is to rewrite history in the Ministry of Truth, bringing it in line with…

[This short story from Firstpost reports on a potentially disturbing but thought-provoking new art installation that provides a simulated first-person experience of death. More information about the installation and the artist who created it is available from the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)’s Melbourne Now website. A 7:08 minute video, “Facing the Fear of Death in Virtual Reality,” is available on YouTube. And information about other highlights of the Melbourne Now event, including some related to presence, is available from the Australian Arts Review and the Herald Sun. A related, earlier simulation by “Beijing’s biggest funeral parlor” is described in…

[The era in which we can’t distinguish even high-definition video of real people from quickly and easily created computer-generated imagery (CGI) is fast approaching. The Ars Technica story below describes a recent demonstration of the MetaHuman Animator motion-capture animation technology this way: “Epic showed off the new machine-learning-powered system, which needed just a few minutes to generate impressively real, uncanny-valley-leaping facial animation from a simple head-on video taken on an iPhone.” The coverage in PC Gamer adds this: “The potential here is huge. Not only will major studios be able to create facial animations in a fraction of the time,…

[The day when you regularly send a digital version of yourself to act as your agent in interactions with other people (and their own digital agents) may not be far off. This short story from Fast Company reports that the video dating app Snack now lets users send “AI-trained avatars of themselves … out into Snack’s virtual dating world to chat with other users” and “if [it] thinks there could be a match, it’ll report to you so you can decide for yourself and start a real human-to-human conversation.” A bit ironic given that one of the app’s tag lines…

[The Colorado-based UCHealth system has added a social presence-evoking augmented reality feature to its mobile app that allows patients (and others) to interact with virtual dogs wherever they have their smartphone or other device. Details are in the story below from UCHealth Today, where the original includes a second picture. A December 2022 Healthcare IT News story notes the connection with presence: “In August [2022], [Nicole]Caputo [UCHealth senior director of Experience and Innovation] told Healthcare IT News that UCHealth plans to keep building AR experiences, in both iOS and Android, that educate patients and improve overall connectivity with their health.…