I had a chance to catch up with Jeri Ellsworth, co-founder and CEO of Tilt Five again at Augmented World Expo 2023. Be sure to catch my previous conversation in episode #1021 where she gives her full epic backstory in inventing Tilt Five at Valve, getting fire, and eventually being able to re-acquire the IP rights against all odds. At the time of this recording, Tilt Five had been shipping for six months, and I get a bit of an update for how their launch has been going, and their various efforts to promote a physical face-to-face use case for tabletop AR gaming.

Ellsworth also shared with me how she used ChatGPT in order to rapidly prototype an AR demo for Tilt Five that they were showing at AWE. She's emphasizes the benefits of being able to quickly discover the fun within AR interactions, and how ChatGPT has been revolutionizing her own rapid prototyping processes by feeding in the Tilt Five API code as an input prompt, and then asking it how a senior Unity developer would go about solving how to visualize a specific data set of live satellite data.

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

Javier Fadul is Director of Innovation at HTX Labs, and I ran into him on the expo floor of the Augmented World Expo 2023. We talked about how he's been using ChatGPT via AR Glasses as a impromptu research assistant, curriculum planner, and children's book co-author. We also talk about how he sees how AI will continued to be integrated into virtual worlds within an educational context. Fadul has gone all in with creating casual conversation and educational dialects large language models via AR, and so he shares some of his initial insights and aspirations for where this could all go in the future.

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

I had a chance to participate in a panel discussion exploring "The Intersection of AI and the Metaverse: What's Next?" on the main stage of Augmented World Expo on the opening day on May 31, 2023. The discussion was moderated by Amy LaMeyer (Managing Partner of WXR Fund), and also featured Tony Parisi (Chief Product Officer, Lamina1), Alvin Graylin (Global VP of Corporate Development , HTC and President of China for HTC). Graylin and I engaged in a bit of a dialectal debate on a number of issues at the end, which was a bit of a continuation of our lively conversation in episode #1185 at the start of SXSW 2023 exploring our differing perspectives about AI. You can check out the video recording our AWE panel, or tune into the podcast version which provides some additional context and the beginning and end (or also check out the rough transcript below).

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

Michael Running Wolf is a Northern Cheyenne/Lakota/Blackfeet indigenous man who grew up in Montana. He's worked for Amazon, but eventually left in order to pursue his lifelong goal of building XR experiences that integrate with AI for language education and to reclaim and preserve indigenous languages. The biggest blocker is that most natural language processing approaches have a hard to dealing with the infinite words that come from polysynthetic languages like many North American indigenous languages.

I had a chance to catch up with Running Wolf at Augmented World Expo where he talked about his aspirations for researching solutions to these open problems, and eventually creating immersive experiences that can create a dynamic relational context that alters how indigenous languages are spoken. Also be sure to check out Running Wolf on a panel discussion about "New Technology, Old Property Laws" at the Existing Law and Extended Reality Symposium at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center along with fellow panelists including Mark Lemley, Tiffany Li, and Micaela Mantegna.

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

I was invited to give an opening keynote talk about AI at a half-day seminar titled "Tech Talks: AI Tools, Tips, & Traps" on April 20, 2023 that was put on by San Jose State University's King Library Experiential Virtual Reality Lab (KLEVR). I titled it "Some Preliminary Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence" (video version and slides) as it was an opportunity to put down some of my initial thoughts on the history of AI, the different ethical perspectives on AI, as well some conceptual frames that I use to help makes sense of the field of AI based upon my experiences at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Also, a lot of the conversations that I've had with XR artists and developers about AI tend to be primarily focused on the immediate utility of the tools rather than the broader ethical and moral implications of the technology. This talk starts to flesh out that aspect a bit more, but I'd also recommend checking out my interview with Access Now's Daniel Leufer about the European Union's AI Act from Voices of VR episode #1177.

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

The Unclaimed Masterpiece won the best student VR project at Laval Virtual as it has a novel integration of a conversational interface with a virtual assistant / character who is assisting you as you try to find the correct virtual painting to steal from a mult-floor gallery. The project was created by Alizée Calet, William Plessis and Maël Sellier, who are all students in the Master MTI 3D at Arts et Métiers Laval. I spoke with Calet and Sellier about their process of creating this escape room VR experience, and the range of different AI integrations that include Whisper, ChatGPT 3.5, and Stable Diffusion to create the paintings in the experience via generative AI.

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

Christina Kinne (aka XaosPrincess) wanted to seed social VR worlds with AI chatbots in order to help catalyze larger social VR gatherings, and so she created the The Quantum Bar in Neos VR, which features a robot bartender that does speech to text via Google services in order to interface with GPT 3.0 in order to create a real-time conversational interface with an AI agent. I had a chance to catch up with Kinne and lead AI engineer Guillermo Valle Perez (aka Guillefix) at Laval Virtual 2023 where their experience premiered. We talk about the development process, the MetaGen.ai community that Valle Perez co-founded in order to facilitate the combination of AI with VR, and some of the theories for how deep learning works (see Stephen Wolfram's article on ChatGPT and talk on Wolfram's "AI Will Shape Our Existence" talk and videos from the Philosophy of Deep Learning conference at NYU). We also talk a bit about some of the open ethical questions around AI, and how AI will continue to be integrated into the production and experience of social VR worlds.

https://quantumbar.ai/

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

Violeta Ayala is a filmmaker, film futurist, and creative technologist who using semantics to create immersive art with ChatGPT and generative AI programs. I had a chance to catch up with her at NewImages France where she talked about how AI has completely revolutionized her creative process as someone who identifies as being on the autistic spectrum, she talks about how AI has enabled her to find new ways to close the gap between her imagination and creative coding projects and immersive art.

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

The intersection of XR and Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic, and this is the start of a 17-part Voices of VR podcast series where I've interviewed different immersive artists and XR developers over the past four months about how they're integrating AI into their workflow in creating virtual and augmented reality projects.

I'm starting the series off with Evo Heyning, how has done a deep dive into dozens of generative AI programs, and she wrote an entire book called Promptcraft: Guidebook for Generative Media in Creative Work that explores our relationship to generative media. I had a chance to talk to her about her book at AWE where we talk about her journey into generative AI, her world in virtual worlds and the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group, and her various projects that live at the intersection of immersive media and AI.

Here is a list of the 17 episodes in this series on the intersection of XR and AI:

#1253: XR & AI Series Kickoff with Evo Heyning on a Promptcraft Guide to Generative Media

#1254: Using AI to Upskill Creative Sovereignty with XR Arist Violeta Ayala

#1255: Using GPT Chatbots to Bootstrap Social VR Spaces with “Quantum Bar” Demo

#1256: Using GPT for Conversational Interface for Escape Room VR Game "The Unclaimed Masterpiece"

#1257: Talk on Preliminary Thoughts on AI: History, Ethics, and Conceptual Frames

#1258: Using XR & AI to Reclaim and Preserve Indigenous Languages with Michael Running Wolf

#1259: AWE Panel on the Intersection of AI and the Metaverse

#1260: Using ChatGPT for XR Education and Persistent Virtual Assistant via AR Headsets

#1261: Using ChatGPT for Rapid Prototyping of Tilt Five AR Applications with CEO Jeri Ellsworth

#1262: Using in AI in AR Filters & ChatGPT for Business Planning with Educator Don Allen Stevenson III

#1263: MeetWol AI Agent with Niantic, Overbeast AR App, & Speculative Architecture Essays with Keiichi Matsuda

#1264: Inworld.ai for Dynamic NPC Characters with Knowledge, Memory, & Robust Narrative Controls

#1265: Integrating Generative AI into Live Theatre Performance in WebXR with OnBoardXR

#1266: Converting Dance into Multi-Channel Generative AI Performance at 30FPS with "Kinectic Diffusion"

#1267: Frontiers of XR & AI Integrations with ONX Studio Technical Directors & Sensorium Co-Founders

#1268: Survey of Open Metaverse Technologies & AI Workflows by Adrian Biedrzycki

#1269: Three XR & AI Projects: "Sex, Desire, and Data Show," "Chomsky vs Chomsky," and "Future Rites"

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

Kinfolk: Black Lands is described by co-founder Idris Brewster as "an Augmented Reality Archive of Black, Brown, LGBTQ, and underrepresented history in general using the power of immersive storytelling and immersive media to uplift stories from our past and connect those with the present and the future." It's an application that features over 20 prominent figures from Black History including digital monuments and statues that you can place in your home or local outdoor environments.

There are also a number of public spaces of historical importance that have site-specific AR installations to engage audiences in the places where these histories occurred. I've covered a previous incarnation of Kinfold when it was Movers and Shakers back in episode #656 with Glenn Cantave when it was focused on recontextualizing the Christopher Columbus monument in New York City with augmented reality art.

I had a chance to catch up with Idris at Tribeca Immersive 2023 to unpack the current state of the their Kinfolk project as well as Kinfolk app for iOS and Kinfolk app for Android, each with native AR features. We also dig into some future plans for their continued content expansion, looking into more immersive and volumetric work, and the potentials for more speculative future art that taps into the Black Imagination and Afrofuturism potentialities.

Kinfolk earned a special jury mention for Tribeca Immersive Storyscapes with a jury comment saying, "A profound and authentic representation of the Black experience in America, KINFOLK’s mission to bring history to contemporary audiences through AR technology not only celebrates the richness of Black culture and history in New York City and beyond, but also serves as a powerful tool for education and understanding, making it a standout contender deserving of recognition."

This is the final episode of my interviews with creators featured at Tribeca Immersive 2023, and here's a full list of all 16 episodes in this series:

#1220: Tribeca Immersive 2023 Preview with Curator Ana Brzezińska

#1238: "The Fury" Combines Two-Channel Video Installation with 360 Video to Explore Memories of Sexual Assault

#1239: "Fortune" Uses AR Filters to Tell Spatial Stories about Money and Facilitate Social Media Conversations

#1240: "Meneath: The Mirrors of Ethics" Uses Pepper's Ghost Technique to Represent Indigenous Ancestors

#1241: "Monstrorama" Narrative Game Uses Mixed Reality to Explore Inner and Outer Monsters

#1242: Poetic Generative AI Film "In Search of Time" Uses Style Transfer To Explore Childhood Memories

#1243: Origin Story of "Pixel Ripped 1978" with Avore and Atari Team + Novel Game-Within-a-Game Mechanics

#1244: "Maya: The Birth" Animation Uses Mythic Symbols & Magical Realism to Explore Menstrual Taboos

#1245: "The Pirate Queen" Narrative Game Wins Tribeca Storyscapes Prize with Exquisite Environmental Storytelling

#1246: Smartphone Orchestra's "Emojiii" Cultivates Playful & Novel Group Social Dynamics

#1247: The Branching Narrative Architecture of "The Expanse: A Telltale Series" Featured at Tribeca Games

#1248: Tribeca Games Curator Casey Baltes Recaps the 2023 Selection of 2D Indie Games

#1249: Experiential Design Breakdown of "Reimagined Vol II: Mahal," A Stylized & Mythic Story of Personal Grief

#1250: Translating 1:1 Experimental Theatre Encounters into 360 Video to Transcend Expectations with Craig Quintero

#1251: From Book to Play to AR Installation, "Colored" Explores the Forgotten Segregation History of Claudette Colvin

#1252: "Kinfolk" App is Cultivating an AR Archive of Black History with Digital Monuments & Speculative Futures

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality