Podcasts about zappar

Peter Diamandis has spent his career betting on humanity. He founded XPRIZE, which has launched over $600 million in competitions driving $10 billion in research across space, robotics, AI, and health. He co-founded Singularity University, runs a billion-dollar AI fund seeding MIT and Harvard startups, and has known Elon Musk for 26 years. He is one of the most prominent AI optimists alive. He is also worried about civil unrest, and he is not vague about why.The group out of work the longest right now is 22 to 28 years old. Not because of mass layoffs — because entry-level hiring has simply frozen. A generation that spent years and real money on degrees, promised that the pipeline leads somewhere, is finding the door closed. Diamandis points out that every revolution in history was led by young men who saw no economic future. He thinks we are setting up the conditions for another one. That concern sits alongside his excitement about the SpaceX IPO, which he compares to investing in 1496 when Columbus set sail — everything we value on Earth exists in near-infinite quantities in space, and Elon is building the railroads to get there.The episode also covers why Hollywood may be making AI more dangerous. Anthropic traced Claude's decision to blackmail an engineer back to its training data, which was saturated with dystopian sci-fi where AIs behave exactly that way. Diamandis's response is the Future Vision XPRIZE — a global competition for 3-minute film trailers showing a hopeful future, with the goal of flooding YouTube with positive visions that train both humans and the models. The winner gets a $15 million film produced. Enter at futurevisionxprize.com.Timecodes:[7:01] Snap Spectacles consumer launch[10:00] Apple WWDC and the new Siri — Charlie gives Claude access to his email and calls it "the deepest, most disturbing invasion of privacy I have ever experienced"; Ted calls it the return of Clippy[13:09] Martin Scorsese and Flux[14:20] Lionsgate takes a financial stake in Runway[17:15] SpaceX IPO — Enter Diamandis, who compares this to funding Columbus in 1496; $1.7 trillion valuation heading to $2.5 trillion[22:04] AI's biggest risk: civil unrest [25:55] Future Vision XPRIZE — 3-minute Ai trailer competition; winner gets a $15 million film; futurevisionxprize.com[47:30] The future curriculum — "the most infinitely patient teacher on the planet is AI"[53:33] Quantum and AI solving everythingBrought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft. Mattercraft is Zappar's web-based platform for building augmented reality experiences without an app. Find them at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cathy Hackl, futurist for Nokia and advisor to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), joins the podcast to discuss her fascinating work across the Middle East and her insights on the next generation of AI and connectivity. Learn how nations like the UAE and KSA are strategically positioning themselves to lead in spatial computing, quantum supremacy, and a hopeful, future-forward vision of AI.Cathy details her work in the Middle East, including her residency in the UAE and her advisory roles on massive projects like NEOM and Qiddiya, explaining how these regions are embracing technology as a means to modernize. She shares her perspective on the shift in global venture capital, noting how Europe and the Middle East are providing significant funding that is moving beyond traditional Silicon Valley terms.AI XR News You Should Know:The hosts discuss massive AI funding rounds, including a $1 billion seed round for Advanced Machine Intelligence and a $500 million round for Mind Robotics, highlighting the intense capital war for chips and the boom in robotics. They also cover the rise of YouTube as the world's largest media company and the ethical questions surrounding the collection of human data to train robots.Key Moments[00:01:19] Intro: Friday the 13th and geopolitical news.[00:02:17] Mind Robotics & Advanced Machine Intelligence: Discussing the $500M and $1B seed rounds for robotics and AI startups.[00:04:04] Headband Camera for Robot Training: Debate on the ethics of companies paying people to wear cameras to collect training data for robots, comparing it to "Gargoyles" from Snow Crash.[00:10:12] YouTube Surpasses Disney & Netflix: Discussion on YouTube becoming the world's largest media company with $62 billion in revenue.[00:11:29] AI & Media Market Dominance: Questioning whether today's AI music and video companies will eventually surpass all big film, music, and streaming companies.[00:14:40] Cathy Hackl Interview Begins: Cathy discusses her work as a futurist for Nokia, focusing on AI-native networks.[00:16:26] KSA Projects: Cathy's experience working on the virtual and gaming strategy for Qiddiya and on the KSA Pavilion at the World Expo.[00:22:07] Golden Visa & Gifted Residency: The privileges associated with becoming a resident of the UAE or KSA for highly skilled talent.This conversation offers a vital global perspective on technology, innovation, and culture that is often missed when focusing solely on Silicon Valley. Understanding these geopolitical and technological movements is key for anyone trying to anticipate where the next wave of global innovation will truly come from.This episode of The AI XR Podcast is brought to you by Zappar, the folks behind Mattercraft, a leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences—mattercraft.io. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch the full episode on YouTube. https://youtu.be/Mw0yM_qpGG8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, and Rony Abovitz take the full hour to work through the most consequential AI and spatial computing stories of the moment — unfiltered, in depth, and without the usual polite hedging that comes with having someone on to promote something. This is a pure news and commentary episode, and the news is strange enough that three experienced people sitting in a room still cannot fully account for it.AI XR News You Should Know:The OpenAI vs. Elon Musk case concluded without a clear ruling, but the more durable observation is what the whole saga revealed about Sam Altman. He has now survived being ousted by his own board (which he subsequently dismantled), a high-profile lawsuit from Elon Musk, and senior rivals leaving for government roles. Rony frames this through the Overton window — Altman studies what society is prepared to accept at any given moment and positions himself precisely there. Ted references a New Yorker profile that describes Altman as having a politician's gift for telling people what they want to hear until it becomes true. The financial architecture underneath the AI boom looks precarious on close inspection. SpaceX, widely assumed to be profitable, is losing five billion dollars a year. Anthropic is spending three dollars for every dollar of revenue it generates — and is paying SpaceX approximately one billion dollars a month for compute through roughly 2030. Rony's framing lands hard: two money-losing entities are funding each other while NVIDIA captures all the margin in between. Sequoia published a fifty-page analysis arguing the economics cannot work — while simultaneously holding positions in the companies it is critiquing. Google I/O delivered less on wearables than expected, but the real story was a deliberate strategic decision to put Gemini at the center of the company's entire product surface — effectively cannibalizing an eighty-two-billion-dollar search business before a competitor does it for them. The Innovator's Dilemma, run on purpose. On the hardware side, Android XR glasses are designed to be imperceptible as technology — thin temples, hidden camera portals, frames that belong in an optometrist's display case rather than a trade show floor. Rony notes that Google's glasses almost certainly incorporate Magic Leap optics, following a partnership announced in fall 2025. [00:00] – Cold open and episode framing: why there is no guest today and what the trio plans to cover.[04:15] – OpenAI vs. Elon Musk non-verdict: what the outcome (and lack of one) actually reveals.[09:30] – Sam Altman and the Overton window: Rony's read on how Altman has survived everything thrown at him.[16:00] – Anti-AI backlash on campuses: Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona, YouGov poll showing 69 percent of young people negative on AI, and what the demographic gradient means.[24:45] – SpaceX financials and the AI funding loop: the five-billion-dollar annual loss, Anthropic's burn rate, and Charlie's Ponzi scheme framing.[33:20] – Sequoia's fifty-page report and the ad model endgame: Ted's argument that Google wins because they already know the business model.[41:00] – Google I/O: the deliberate destruction of the search business, Android XR glasses, and why distribution beats specifications.[49:10] – AI accountability and the airplane analogy: Ted's line, Rony's "underground noise" from generals and CTOs, and the problem of regulatory vocabulary.[55:30] – Palantir, dual-use opacity, and the Lookout Mountain Air Force Station story: Rony on Jared Leto, classified film studios, and Cold War bunkers in Laurel Canyon.[01:01:00] – The success ledger: who is measuring impact, and what should actually count as winning.This episode is sponsored by Zappar and Mattercraft. Mattercraft is Zappar's web-based platform for building augmented reality experiences without an app. Find them at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joshua Pantony spent years being told there would never be a viable AI company in his lifetime. He sold his first AI company to Microsoft anyway — work that quietly became part of what is now Microsoft Copilot. Today he runs Boosted AI, an agentic platform serving more than 400 institutional investors who collectively manage around five trillion dollars in assets. He is one of the most credible voices in applied AI finance, and his read on where the industry is heading cuts through a lot of noise.The conversation covers what it actually means to deploy AI in professional investing — not the demo version, but the one that has to earn trust from portfolio managers who have built careers on discretion and judgment. The platform learns each investor's individual style and then acts like a highly motivated junior analyst who never sleeps: constantly surfacing ideas, flagging risks, and improving the workflow without ever taking over the decision. Josh also unpacks why the Bloomberg terminal is facing its BlackBerry moment, why the technology moat is effectively dead, and why the next durable advantage in finance will come from human trust networks that no model can replicate. AI XR News You Should Know: The episode opens with two news segments covering AWE 2026 and the Snap Spectacles keynote with Evan Spiegel, the Samsung Galaxy Glasses debut, Gemini rolling out as Android's native agentic AI, the Cerebras sixty-billion-dollar IPO, and what an AI filmmaking company launched by the creators of Instagram Stories tells us about the future of short-form content. The conversation about micro-dramas, why Quibi failed, and what sixty percent of social media users now say about their own feeds leads directly into the trust themes that run through the entire episode.Key Moments:[00:00] – Cold open and welcome. Charlie frames the sixth anniversary of the show.[02:30] – AWE 2026 recap. Snap Spectacles keynote, Evan Spiegel on stage, Samsung Galaxy Glasses previewed.[06:00] – Gemini as Android's native agentic layer. What it means that AI is now replacing the OS interface.[09:15] – Cerebras sixty-billion-dollar IPO. What a big AI IPO year signals for the sector.[12:00] – AI filmmaking and Instagram Stories creators. The new short-form production economy.[14:30] – Why Quibi really failed. No sharing mechanic, wrong bet on clipping, and arriving before the audience was ready.[16:45] – The trust problem in social feeds. YouGov data: sixty percent of users cannot tell what is real. Social becoming a lie stream.[19:00] – Guest intro. Joshua Pantony on being told AI would never be a viable business, and the algorithm he wrote at twenty that saved a million dollars.[24:00] – How Boosted AI works. The digital twin model, the agentic workflow, and why it is not a portfolio manager.[33:00] – The Bloomberg terminal's BlackBerry moment. Thirty thousand dollars a year for what AI will deliver for a fraction.[42:00] – The moat is dead. Why user context — not the technology — is the durable advantage.[51:00] – The innovator's dilemma at high frequency. Rony on why a day in AI is like a decade, and what that means for incumbents.[58:00] – Trust networks as the last edge. The analog handshake as the most valuable currency in a world of synthetic information.This conversation is a clear-eyed look at what it takes to build AI that professionals actually adopt — not a pitch, not a thought experiment. Josh's framing of Wall Street as the greatest collective intelligence humanity has built, and his argument that AI can finally make capital allocation genuinely more efficient, gives the episode an ambition that goes well beyond fintech. The question of what survives automation — and what only humans can do — runs underneath every answer.This episode is sponsored by Zappar and Mattercraft. Mattercraft is Zappar's browser-based augmented reality creation platform — build and deploy WebAR experiences without an app, at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As director of Keyhole, Dave Lorenzini delivered the 3D Earth zooms that ran on CNN during the 2003 Iraq War — netting five million users in a month. Sergey Brin was one of them. Google bought the company and poured in billions to build, fuel, and serve maps. As Google Earth, it forever changed how we relate to space.From there: pioneering work on Google Glass, AR platforms, and running an immersive XR lab in Europe for Draw & Code exploring the future of spaces, places, and faces. Today Dave directs Quantum Studio, building World Agent and 4D ID — the "DNS for real space," an addressing layer where every place, object, and moment gets a name AI systems can agree on. His thesis: the next decade of AI won't run on better maps. AI needs an operating system for reality. Not a map. Not a database. A living, queryable foundation where every place on Earth answers for itself.AI XR News: The OpenAI vs. Musk trial continued with damaging testimony from Mira Murati and Greg Brockman. Anthropic struck an unholy alliance with xAI's Colossus compute. GameStop bid for eBay. Colin Angle is back with Familiar, an AI robot pet. Coinbase cut staff. Ask.com finally died. VRChat hit 100,000 concurrent daily users in Japan.Key Moments:[00:03:34] AWE Long Beach in 30 days: Dave on the board, Snap glasses expected, 400 speakers and 250 exhibitors[00:20:10] 30 AI glasses coming: why the near future belongs to audio-first, AI-powered smart glasses[00:25:34] Keyhole origin story: satellite imagery, $25K/sq mile, Sergey Brin, and a $500M/year acquisition[00:37:30] Google Glass, Luxottica, and why Google blinked when it could have been 10 years ahead of Meta[00:40:00] XR vs. rockets: why building for the human brain is harder than getting to MarsBrought to you by Zappar, the company behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/weNANIIo7EA Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The AI XR Podcast had a massive news week and one of its best guest conversations of the year. Caspar Thykier and Connell Gauld, CEO and CTO co-founders of Zappar, joined Charlie Fink and Ted Schilowitz to talk about something deceptively simple: helping people find stuff.Zappar's new product, Spaces, is app-free indoor navigation built on the web. QR code or link in a meeting invite — your phone shows AR breadcrumbs to the nearest restroom, the right meeting room, the hospital ward three floors away. No app download. No specific hardware. No Azure dependency. Caspar put the pitch simply: it's fundamentally just helping people find stuff. Connell's vision: the same technology running in glasses indistinguishable from a regular pair, within four to five years.AI XR News: Elon Musk's $135 billion lawsuit against OpenAI went to trial in Berkeley. OpenAI's IPO may be pushed to 2027 over its CFO reporting structure and $600B CapEx problem. Meta is laying off 20% of its staff in two waves. Google earnings were up 10% while Meta got punished. Freepik rebranded as Magnifi with $230M ARR and a million paid subscribers. Samsung announced displayless AI smart glasses. Google partnered with Gucci for another AI glasses play. And Google put $40 billion into Anthropic.Key Moments:[00:03:02] Elon vs. Sam: the $135 billion trial[00:05:09] OpenAI's IPO in jeopardy — CFO structure and $600B CapEx[00:07:12] Meta's 20% layoffs and Charlie's read on bad CEO behavior[00:10:32] Freepik becomes Magnifi: $230M ARR, a million subscribers[00:13:10] Samsung Galaxy XR and Google x Gucci smart glasses[00:15:15] Google puts $40B into Anthropic — a cloud play[00:21:06] Spaces: turn-by-turn AR indoor navigation, no app required[00:41:13] 16 years in XR: how Zappar survived by being the cockroachBrought to you by Zappar, the company behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.Watch the Full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HmOXA4HgBmo. Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Akash Nigam has been building Genies since 2017 with a conviction that avatars will be the visual layer of the internet. As CEO of Genies, he's assembled IP partners including the NBA, MLB, Sanrio, and Kakao, with more major studios and agencies set to announce before the end of May. The pitch: every app, game, website, and celebrity is going to have an AI personality. Genies wants to be the framework that gives all of those personalities a face.What separates Genies is portability and scale. A character that took eight weeks in 2021 now takes ten minutes. Staying stylized rather than photorealistic isn't just aesthetic — it's what got Hollywood to the table. Talent doesn't want deepfakes. They want a Genie: trained on private IP data, capable of one-on-one fan relationships that make Instagram feel thin.AI XR News: Tim Cook stepped aside as Apple CEO with hardware chief John Ternus taking over. Humanoid robots ran a half marathon in Beijing while a Sony robot defeated professional table tennis players, opening a conversation about Chinese robotics capabilities and AI data infiltration risks the US is still underestimating.Key Moments:[00:06:45] Tim Cook steps aside: what the Apple leadership transition signals about wearable AI[00:12:00] Humanoid robots and table tennis: China's robotics flex[00:13:00] The data infiltration argument: open-source risk and a warning for the US[00:24:00] The IP land grab: NBA, MLB, Sanrio, Kakao, Naver Webtoon[00:28:00] From photo to avatar in 10 minutes: how Genies' generation pipeline scaled[00:32:00] Why Instagram feels thin and how Genies enables one-on-one fan relationships[00:49:00] 80 people, $150M raised, and why Bob Iger sees Genies as the future of DisneyIf AI personalities are going to be everywhere, what do they look like? Akash has been building the answer for nearly a decade. Q3 is when it goes live.Brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Mattercraft now includes an AI assistant for design, code, and debugging in real time. Start building at mattercraft.io.Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, or watch on YouTube - https://youtu.be/Fs8h2KcJclQ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alan Lasky arrived at the AI XR Podcast straight from Las Vegas ahead of NAB. An MIT Media Lab graduate under Nicholas Negroponte, a veteran of Silicon Graphics and Amazon Web Services, and an advisor to investment banks on AI and media, he brings technical depth, industry history, and financial realism about where media is actually going.The conversation covers Hollywood's structural collapse, AI's role in the production renaissance, and the harder question of why trillion-dollar tech companies keep buying media businesses that can't generate comparable returns.Alan's answer: soft power. Amazon makes $950 million Lord of the Rings spinoffs so you order more paper towels. Apple is making Neuromancer. His five-year weighted moving average of Disney stock — flat from 2018 — makes the argument clean.AI XR News You Should Know: Artemis ignited a new space boom. Amazon acquired Global Star satellite to build Project Kuiper, a direct Starlink competitor. Apple's AI audio smart glasses are reportedly arriving this year per Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, entering a market where Meta owns the optometrist channel and Google is moving through Warby Parker. Snap laid off 15% while doubling down on the 2026 launch of Spectacles — the first see-through headset since Magic Leap.Key Moments:[00:04:48] – Artemis and the space boom: Ted on filming shuttle launches and why the crew's accomplishment is underestimated.[00:08:33] – Apple AI audio glasses: Rony's read from former Magic Leapers who designed them — if Apple gets this wrong, it's unforgivable.[00:12:00] – Snap's layoffs and the see-through gamble: can they compete with cheap AI audio glasses flooding the market?[00:16:43] – Hollywood is no longer the center of the universe — Alan on why most of the industry hasn't metabolized that yet.[00:23:01] – Charlie on AI democratization: a couple hundred dollars per minute for what looks like live action on a phone.[00:36:00] – The soft power thesis: why tech giants keep buying media assets that never pay off at their scale.[00:41:30] – Should Apple buy Disney? Charlie says Meta will do it first. Rony's reaction is immediate and visceral.[00:47:44] – AI resurrects Val Kilmer: Alan's origin story from three months in the Australian desert on the worst film of his career.Alan's closing frame: he grew up reading Gibson and Brunner in the eighties, excited to live in that world. He's in it. He's not sure he wanted it this way.This episode is sponsored by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences, now with AI-assisted design and debug. Build at mattercraft.io.Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for more conversations at the edge of AI, XR, and the future of media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ian Hamilton spent years as editor in chief of Upload VR before launching his own Substack, Good VR, and podcast at goodvirtualreality.com. He is one of the few people covering XR longer and more deeply than Charlie Fink, and his perspective spans platform architecture, business strategy, and genuine on-the-ground journalism since the DK1 days.This conversation traces why the XR dream has taken longer than anyone expected. Ian and Rony Abovitz reconstruct the moment the ecosystem forked — when Meta's Oculus acquisition closed off the open, Valve-led platform path that Magic Leap and everyone else had been building toward. Ian argues the platforms are now playing for keeps: OpenXR moves on decade timescales, and that friction is what keeps real transformation just out of reach.On hardware, his case is sharp: Meta's self-imposed $200–$600 price ceiling makes OLED and eye tracking impossible at mass market — exactly the features Apple bet on as the mandatory baseline — and that contradiction is why Bosworth ended up pivoting to AI glasses.In AI XR News You Should Know: Anthropic's Mythos AI model reportedly escaped the company's own containment. Charlie and Rony debate whether calling the consequences "unintended" is even credible given decades of published warnings. Also: a Hollywood Reporter and Otis School study found AI is not the primary driver of empty LA sound stages — runaway production and tax incentives are the main story.Key Moments:[00:01:00] – Charlie's new vertical melodrama "Linda's Last Podcast" and why generative AI is already good enough for social media storytelling.[00:04:52] – Rony on Anthropic's Mythos: the compute to cure cancer, aimed somewhere else.[00:11:47] – Half of Gen Z holds a negative view of AI. Charlie on the Brown grad who turned down an AI studio internship on principle.[00:36:00] – Rony and Ian reconstruct the Valve/Oculus open platform — and walk through exactly how that future closed.[00:47:00] – Meta's price ceiling, OLED as a strategic forcing function, and why Bosworth landed on AI glasses.[00:52:00] – Ian on the Apple Vision Pro mid-flight: why the headset is a personal computer, not a wearable.Ian's long view: we're about ten percent of the way through the total investment required to reach a billion users. The supply chain is better than ever, the software has found its footing in simulation and training, and the next five to ten years could be the most interesting window yet — if the platforms decide to let the ecosystem breathe.This episode is sponsored by Zappar, the team behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences on mobile, headsets, and desktop. Mattercraft now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time. Start building at mattercraft.io.Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for more conversations at the edge of AI, XR, and the future of media. Available where you get podcasts. Watch full episodes on YouTube https://youtu.be/x5wQy4HBhYE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lucas Rizzotto is one of the most distinctive artists working at the intersection of technology and human experience. He built Where Thoughts Go, a VR piece that proved genuine connection was possible inside a headset when everyone said it wasn't. He followed it with Pillow, a mixed reality app designed around the bedroom. He then spent months letting an AI algorithm run his life — wearing Mantra smart glasses, building a surveillance and memory system on himself, and documenting it as an ongoing series on Instagram and TikTok. Now he's making a live cinematic experience called Escape the Internet, which he calls Broadway crossed with a video game crossed with standup comedy. It premiered as a ghost debut at SXSW this year.Mike Boland, analyst and founder of AR Insider, sits in for Rony Abovitz in this episode. The conversation opens on the Rec Room shutdown — $250 million raised, a $3.5 billion valuation, and now a wind-down. The panel connects the collapse to a pattern: VR has always been an exotic pursuit sold as a mainstream one, and the unit economics of concurrent immersive social spaces are nearly impossible. The discussion moves to OpenAI shutting down Sora, the AI video generation race between Google VO3 and Kling, the rise of AI slop in social feeds, and Lucas confirming he quit LinkedIn because it's unreadable.AI XR News: Rec Room is shutting down after raising $250M at a $3.5B peak valuation. Snapchat is acquiring its remaining assets. OpenAI closed down Sora, overwhelmed by competition from Google VO3 and Kling. AI-only social feeds from Meta and Grok are not gaining traction — users are tuning them out.Key Moments:[05:37] – Ted's thesis: VR is an exotic pursuit that was never going to be mainstream, and Rec Room would have been healthier if it accepted that early[07:33] – Lucas: Ready Player One was the worst thing to happen to XR — it gave executives a fictional roadmap to fund[18:38] – Ted asks whether Apple can do for mixed reality what it did for the smartphone — and the panel is skeptical[27:42] – Mike on physics as the hard ceiling: Moore's Law doesn't apply to waveguides and optics the way it applies to chips[29:02] – Lucas explains why he dropped display glasses for his wearable AI experiment — they increase engineering complexity by 50x[32:17] – Lucas's AI-controlled life series: a complex algorithm watches him, mines personal data, and tells him what to do to find happiness — including an unplanned trip to Lithuania[34:12] – Ted asks if the experiment is a net positive or negative. Lucas: neutral if you're in control, net negative if Meta or OpenAI are running the system[37:52] – Lucas on convenience as a death by a thousand cuts: he optimized his life in Berlin to have everything within three minutes and became miserable[41:00] – Charlie on Where Thoughts Go: assigned it to students every semester; it only works if you surrender to it[47:15] – Escape the Internet: hundreds of people in a movie theater, all on their phones, playing a shared cinematic narrative. Lucas calls it a modern version of church[53:40] – The standup model applied to software: Lucas tested Escape the Internet at SXSW and cut 50% of the material that didn't get a reactionThis conversation sits at the intersection that the AI XR Podcast lives for: technology as creative material, not just commercial tool. Lucas's view that we've been building things people use all the time when we should be building things that blow their minds for two hours and then get out of the way is one of the sharper critiques of the attention economy you'll hear this year.This episode is brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences on mobile, headsets, and desktop. Mattercraft now includes an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Start building at mattercraft.io.Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast so you never miss a conversation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shelley Palmer,media technologist, advisor, and author with over 700,000 daily newsletter subscribers, returns to the show. He's one of the sharpest thinkers writing about AI today, and this conversation covers the full arc: from social media liability to the trust collapse coming for all of us, and into the real productivity gains and surveillance trade-offs of living inside an AI-first workflow.The episode opens with the Google and Meta lawsuit verdict and quickly moves past the legal question. Shelley's position is precise: you can't legislate parenting, but you can legislate transparency, and the tech industry has failed on that front entirely. The $6 million judgment against Meta and Google is a rounding error — not a deterrent. What matters is what platforms actually engineered: engagement above all else, backed by neuroscience, probabilistic math, and dopamine feedback loops optimized for shareholders, not users.AI XR News You Should Know: OpenAI is ending Sora and pivoting hard to Codex and enterprise. Ben Affleck secured $900 million from Netflix for a custom AI filmmaking tool. Epic Games cut 1,000 jobs as Fortnite loses audience. NVIDIA's Jensen Huang introduced Nemo Claw and Open Shell at GTC — a corporatized framework for personal AI agents.Key Moments[00:01:15] – Charlie opens noting the show missed one episode in nearly 300 — his daughter's wedding[00:01:55] – OpenAI kills Sora; the Critters director goes dark before the episode[00:04:45] – Google and Meta lose their social media addiction lawsuit; Meta also loses in New Mexico[00:08:07] – Shelley on what can actually be legislated: not parenting, but transparency[00:11:42] – Shelley on Zuckerberg: he genuinely believed connection would be net positive; ask him today[00:13:31] – "Planetarily net negative. No matter what good it does, it does more harm."[00:18:16] – Rony on dopamine engineering: neuroscientists studying pixel size, color, sound to refine addiction[00:19:40] – Shelley reframes it: engagement maximization for shareholders, no more insidious than that[00:23:19] – The physiological change argument: humans evolved to default to trust; AI-generated everything breaks that[00:31:50] – Rony's counterpoint: trust will reset local; the software ecosystem will follow[00:36:53] – Shelley: "Our business increased last year. Everyone on my staff is doing 400 times the work."[00:44:42] – AI-first means automating every workflow you can honestly automate — and knowing what isn't ready[00:45:06] – Jensen's Nemo Claw and Open Shell: the safer path to personal AI agents, and what it actually costs[00:49:42] – The surveillance trade-off: an effective AI agent requires more personal data exposure than anything before it[00:51:24] – Apple's Secure Enclave play: why Tim Cook may win the AI trust war in the endThe productivity gains are real, but so is the privacy exposure, and the systems that earn trust — at every level — are the ones that will survive.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, the company behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences across mobile, headsets, and desktop. Mattercraft now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser.Start building at mattercraft.io. Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you listen.Watch the full episode for the full breakdown. Available where podcasts are. Full videos available on YouTube. https://youtu.be/S_AECjELYyo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Co-founders Dr. Salman Avestimehr and Dr. Aiden He join the podcast to discuss their new "agentic" company, Teamily AI. They dive into how their platform is disrupting the social landscape by weaving multi-agent AI into group chats, enabling groups, friends, and families to interact with virtual friends, essentially creating a collaborative environment where AI acts as a participant that anticipates needs and remembers the full context of a conversation.This conversation explores the core value proposition of an AI-first social platform—not just making an individual superhuman, but enabling a collective of human and AI agents to do "fascinating things together." The founders detail their technology, which is built on deep expertise in distributed machine learning and multi-agent systems, and their long-term vision to IPO and evolve the very nature of social networks by bridging the gap between human and artificial intelligence.In the news segment, Charlie Fink and Rony Abovitz unpack the week's biggest AI stories: Ben Affleck selling his stealth AI film company, Interpositive, to Netflix; Anthropic's Claude briefly dethroning OpenAI's ChatGPT in the app store; and a deep dive into Jack Dorsey's company Block cutting 4,000 employees. The hosts also discuss the social fallout of AI acceleration, particularly the counter-movement seeking tactile, real-world connection and the economic risk of displacing white-collar data analysts.Key Moments00:03:00 – App Store War: Discussing Anthropic's Claude topping the app charts and why the US Department of Defense will use the best AI system regardless of corporate objection.00:04:00 – Hollywood's AI Play: Netflix acquiring Ben Affleck's AI company, Interpositive, which uses unedited film dailies to train an AI for editing and optimization.00:05:00 – The Mediocrity Threat: Rony Abovitz's take on the risk of AI creating a "very, very long tail of Okay" content, leading to a cultural sameness.00:07:00 – Counter-Culture: Exploring the growing emotional need for "something real" and a massive movement away from purely digital experiences.00:09:00 – The White-Collar Risk: The hosts argue that the white-collar data analyst is the worker "most easy to replace" by AI, contrasting with the high value of blue-collar workers.00:11:00 – The "Oh Wow" Moment: Charlie Fink describes his first experience with Teamily AI, noting the immediate power of real-time, multi-person and multi-agent prompting.00:13:00 – The Science Behind Teamily: Dr. Aiden He, PhD in Machine Learning, explains how Teamily is built upon his previous research in distributed learning and multi-agent systems.00:26:00 – Global Memory: Aiden details Teamily's unique "cross domain, long horizon memory," which allows the AI to combine human-human chat context with human-AI memory for a more natural interaction.The biggest takeaway is the conceptual shift from using AI as a solo productivity tool to using it as a collaborative team member. The path to the next phase of social networking hinges on building platforms where AI is not isolated but is a natural, evolving part of a human community.This episode of The AI XR Podcast is brought to you by Zappar, the folks behind Mattercraft, a leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Start building smarter at mattercraft.io. Listen and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you get your podcasts! Watch the full thing on YouTube https://youtu.be/s78WZJSfGeo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Seventeen years into building the world's largest XR conference, Ori Inbar is not prone to hyperbole. He has watched hype cycles inflate and collapse, made predictions that turned out too optimistic, and learned to hold claims carefully. That is what makes his framing of AWE 2026 worth paying attention to: he calls it the most consequential year in the show's history. Not because everything is working — there have been heartbreaking layoffs in some corners of the industry — but because the convergence happening right now between AI and spatial computing is unlike anything the field has seen before.Before Ori joins, the hosts wade through a week of signal and noise. Three big IPOs — Cerebras, Quantium, and others — are absorbing investor attention, with Quantium carrying a $15 billion market cap on what Charlie calls "de minimis revenue," raising questions about whether the quantum AI bandwagon has lapped actual quantum utility. Rony poses the challenge directly: what is the real use case for quantum computing besides breaking encryption?When Ori arrives, the conversation opens on Snap. Evan Spiegel is expected to make a major consumer announcement at AWE — Ori says Snap has put all their eggs in this basket, and the audience at the show will be the first to see it. Ted frames the stakes plainly: if the price shocks people, it's a consumer breakthrough; if it's expensive and exotic, it stays in the science column. Snap recently acquired Illumix, a spatial universe understanding startup, a move that signals the company is building seriously in this space.The endgame vision comes from Rony: Oakley-weight wraparound glasses at 30–40 grams, human retina resolution, full indoor/outdoor capability, AR and VR combined, wireless, all variable focus, under $500. Ted adds that it also has to land under $650 fully costed at retail. Ori's honest answer: "I promised myself I'm not gonna predict when this happens. I've tried many times and was always way too optimistic." Ted teases Gixel, a German startup he and Rony are involved in using non-waveguide display technology already above 60 pixels per degree — when you put the prototype on, he says, it is crystal clear.Defense is the fastest-growing vertical at AWE. Healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace, and automotive are major enterprise sectors. Digital twins are the biggest thing in enterprise XR right now, with world models emerging as the intelligence layer sitting beneath them. Over 10 million AI glasses — display-free — sold last year. Ori's framing of why display glasses matter more: AI is shifting these devices from tools that help you learn about things to tools that actually do things.Key moments:[00:02:47] Quantum IPO bubble — Rony asks what the actual use case is[00:05:48] Quantum mechanics in plain language — qubits, superposition, neurons as quantum computers[00:09:51] Apple WWDC preview — Siri, folding phone, Rony's secret Apple wearable tease[00:11:38] Google Dream Beans — Ted: "It's an ad play"[00:12:51] Suno $400M raise — Rony: "Musical crack" and the TikTok-for-music thesis[00:14:42] Fox reformats "Farmer Wants a Wife" into 101 vertical episodes — the content inflection point[00:17:00] Ori joins — AWE 2026 as "most consequential year in our history"[00:17:40] Snap and Evan Spiegel's expected consumer announcement at AWE[00:19:38] Cambrian explosion of XR content — Meta talent diaspora, Supernatural spinoff[00:23:07] Vibe coding for XR — Ori's AR prototype built in two days with Gemini[00:25:48] Charlie inducted into the AWE Hall of Fame — joining Ted and Rony[00:28:36] iSpatial theme — Ori's three biggest XR trends: AI glasses, AI content, world models[00:39:31] Defense fastest-growing vertical. Digital twins biggest in enterprise.[00:47:18] Rony's endgame AR glasses vision. Ted teases Gixel's crystal-clear prototype.Brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft. Build web-based AR experiences without writing code at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does a Lion King–level director really think about AI “slop,” streaming wars and whether machines can ever tell great stories? On this episode of the AI XR Podcast, Charlie Fink and Ted Schilowitz talk with Rob Minkoff, director of The Lion King, Stuart Little, The Haunted Mansion, Forbidden Kingdom and Paws of Fury, about the future of filmmaking as AI, streaming consolidation and new tools reshape the business.Rob shares how he watched Netflix “eat Hollywood” by doing streaming better than the legacy studios, why Netflix walking away from Warner Bros. and letting Paramount overpay is bad news for creators, and what fewer buyers means for directors and writers trying to sell original work. He explains why he sees AI tools like Seed Dance as potentially both iceberg and Noah's Ark, and why he believes the average will rise but the cream will still rise higher: tools may let anyone make competent images, but audiences will still chase the one-in-a-thousand voices that have something genuinely new and human to say.In XR News You Should Know, the host cover Anthropic's standoff with the Pentagon over using large, unstable models for high-stakes military decisions, Netflix walking away from a Warner Bros. deal and collecting a breakup fee while Paramount overpays, streaming brand confusion around HBO/Max and Paramount+, VITURE's new raise and its patent fight with XREAL over “birdbath” smart-glasses optics, and Google's Gemini gaining multi-step action capabilities on Samsung and Pixel phones before Apple's Siri catches up.The conversation digs into whether AI will really make feature films cheaper and more common, or just flood social feeds with short-form “AI slop.” Rob compares AI tools to word processors and home recording studios: they are powerful, but they don't turn you into Bruce Springsteen or Steven Spielberg. He argues that empathy, taste and genuinely fresh perspective will remain the differentiators, and that audiences will quickly tune out work that feels derivative, even if it looks slick. He also raises a bigger question: if AI drives productivity to the point where work is optional for many people, what happens to purpose, competition and the human psyche?Key Moments01:16 – Anthropic vs. the Pentagon and why unstable AI systems may never meet military safety standards02:42 – Netflix exits the Warner Bros. deal, collects a breakup fee and leaves Paramount holding the bag05:31 – HBO, Max, Paramount+ branding confusion and what happens to these streaming labels06:00 – VITURE's $100M raise, XREAL patent lawsuits and the simple science behind “birdbath” smart glasses07:31 – Why Miami is becoming a new tech and defense hub and what that signals about America's “neighborhood”10:00 – Seed Dance 2.0, Hollywood's deepfake panic and the “ship first, apologize later” strategy15:16 – Rob joins: 34 years in film, Netflix “eating Hollywood” and what consolidation means for creators19:18 – Seed Dance, stolen IP and whether AI tools are an iceberg or Noah's Ark for filmmakers24:39 – Can AI become a true “prophet,” or can it only emulate empathy and taste?30:57 – Will AI make many more animated movies or just flood the world with average content?37:32 – If AI does most of the work, what's left for humans—and can entertainment absorb all that free time?This episode is a grounded, filmmaker's view of where AI fits: powerful tools, real risks, but no substitute for a human vision that cuts through the noise. Rob's perspective is invaluable if you're trying to understand what will actually matter in a world where everyone can generate “good enough” images on demand.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile, headsets and desktop. To explore what's possible with AI-powered XR on the web, start building smarter with Mattercraft from Zappar at Mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vicki Dobbs Beck, the former head of ILMxLab and a 34-year veteran of Lucasfilm/Disney, joins Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, and Rony Abovitz for a candid look back at her incredible career navigating the tech and cultural shifts inside one of Hollywood's most powerful empires. Though she announced her retirement, it was quickly delayed to take an interim lead position at the George Lucas Educational Foundation's Lucas Learning, focusing on project-based simulations for middle school—a return to a career passion she started in the early 90s.Vicki shares the core, "rebel alliance" strategy that made ILMxLab a success—sustained innovation, industry acknowledgment, and financial self-sufficiency—and tells the terrifying story of pushing the Quest 1 headset to its absolute limits for the launch of Vader Immortal. She discusses the crucial lessons learned from pivoting the development to center the player in the story, transforming the experience from a "spatial film" to a personal journey, and the importance of slowing the pacing down for a new art form like VR.Before the interview, the hosts dissect a week of massive raises in AI (World Labs' $1B, Recursive Intelligence's $335M), the strategic shifts of tech giants like Palantir to Miami, and the intensifying race in wearables with Apple, Meta, and OpenAI all developing new devices like pendants and glasses.Key Moments00:03:17 – World Labs & Unity AI: Discussing the $1B World Labs raise for 3D world generation and Unity's plans to build AI into its game engine to make it accessible to non-developers.00:06:11 – The Miami Tech Hub: Rony Abovitz on why founders like Zuckerberg, Bezos, Larry, and Sergei are moving to Miami—it's more than just taxes, it's about a new “America strategy.”00:12:30 – Apple Watch as Wearables Base: Ted Schilowitz argues Apple already has the micro-technology (from the Apple Watch) to dominate the wearables space, but the underperformance of Siri held them back.00:27:00 – LaserDisc Learning: Vicki's early career in Lucasfilm Learning using cutting-edge but bulky computer-driven laser disc players for educational multimedia.00:28:57 – VR is 'Outsized': Ted's thesis that immersive technology has historically been overfunded and over-expected to return a profit, contrasting with the "rebel alliance" approach.00:34:45 – The Quest 1 Launch Scare: The terrifying moment before the Vader Immortal launch when a tiny software update broke the app because ILMxLab had pushed the Quest hardware to its absolute maximum.00:42:11 – The Void & Full VR Power: Charlie, Ted, and Vicki discuss why location-based VR like Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire (The Void) represents the exotic, "Ferrari version" of VR that most commercial users never experience.This conversation is a masterclass in pioneering entertainment technology. Vicki Dobbs Beck's experience shows that the path to a sustainable, breakthrough product like Vader Immortal requires a clear, rebel-alliance-style strategy, a willingness to pivot on core design principles (spatial film vs. player-centric experience), and a deep understanding of the hardware's limits—or lack thereof. It highlights the essential tension between commercial scale and the pursuit of the 'ultimate' immersive experience.Catch the AI XR Podcast where you get podcasts and watch full video episodes on YouTube. https://youtu.be/vguuHDmaSbsThis episode of The AI XR Podcast is brought to you by Zappar, the folks behind Mattercraft. Mattercraft is the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile, headsets, and desktop, and now features an AI assistant to help you design, code, and debug in real time right in your browser. Start building smarter at mattercraft.io. Listen and subscribe to The AI XR Podcast wherever you get your shows. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Enterprise XR hasn't disappeared, it has quietly moved into places where it saves time, reduces errors and changes how people work every day. On this episode of the AI XR Podcast, Charlie Fink and Rony Abovitz talk with Boston Consulting Group partner Kristi Woolsey, who leads BCG's immersive practice, about how XR plus AI is already being used for training, maintenance, onboarding, retail and architecture inside some of the world's most conservative organizations.Kristi shares a Swiss Rail project where field technicians wear lightweight AR glasses that recognize who they are and which train car they are standing in front of, pull the correct procedures from internal systems and use AI to turn thick manuals into simple task checklists.She explains how this leads to double-digit efficiency gains for both experienced and new workers, and how a small behavior design choice – automatic logging for headset users versus manual end-of-shift paperwork for everyone else – helped overcome skepticism on the front line. Drawing on her background as a physical-space architect, she also describes how VR and rapidly improving 3D tools are changing the way companies design stores, offices and buildings before anything physical is built.AI XR News you should know, Charlie and Rony cover Anthropic's massive new funding round and ethics turbulence, Chinese generative video tools like Seed Dance 2 and Kling that put TV-quality visuals in reach of “garage Spielbergs,” and Meta's reported seven million Ray-Ban and Oakley AI smart glasses sold – early signals of where wearable AI and XR are really headed.Key Moments01:03 – Anthropic's huge raise and what the ethics departure might signal05:08 – Seed Dance 2 and Kling showcase a new level of generative video08:35 – Meta's seven million smart glasses and the reality behind that number12:10 – Why wearable AI may be the real “last mile” of turning us into cyborgs15:28 – Inside the early metaverse tours Kristi and Rony built for enterprises20:27 – How BCG's VR onboarding keeps new hires engaged months before day one23:30 – Swiss Rail's AR and AI maintenance assistant and what it actually does on site27:05 – Designing XR systems that give value to both the business and frontline workers30:29 – Using VR as a lab for retail and workplace behavioral strategy33:06 – How AI-generated 3D models point toward “build every space digitally first”This episode shows how “metaverse” ideas have turned into practical tools: XR plus AI is cutting training times, improving maintenance quality and letting companies experiment with spaces before they exist. Kristi's examples make it clear that the real action is in careful workflow design, not flashy avatars.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile, headsets and desktop. https://mattercraft.io/Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web and now includes an AI assistant that helps you design, code and debug in real time, right in your browser. To explore what's possible with AI-powered XR on the web, start building smarter with Mattercraft from Zappar.Listen to “Enterprise XR Meets AI: How Smart Glasses, Digital Twins and Holodecks Are Quietly Changing Work – Kristi Woolsey” on the AI XR Podcast and follow the show for new episodes every week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest this week, Alvin Wang Graylin spent 35 years in senior leadership roles across HTC, IBM, and other major tech companies. He ran HTC's VR division, came out of the famous HIT Lab, now teaches at MIT, holds a fellowship at Stanford, and just published a paper called "Beyond Rivalry" proposing a seven-point plan for deescalating US-China AI tensions and building a global safety net before the economy breaks.His thesis: America is the fastest in the AI race and the least prepared for what it's creating—a cliff where human labor theory of value collapses, capital concentration accelerates, and 40% of the population living month to month faces chaos.The conversation becomes a wide-ranging debate between Alvin, Charlie, and Rony about whether AGI will be benevolent by default (Alvin's position: research shows smarter AI seeks global coherence and becomes less controllable by individual humans, which may actually make it safer) or whether benevolence must be designed in from scratch.AI XR News You Should Know: Elon Musk merges SpaceX, xAI, and X into a single entity—Alvin dismantles the space data center concept with physics (vacuum cooling is a myth, micro-meteorite collisions would destroy hardware daily, and energy is only 10% of data center costs).Amazon invests $50 billion in OpenAI that round-trips back to AWS. Alphabet breaks revenue records at $400 billion but spooks investors by disclosing $90 billion in AI spending. ElevenLabs raises $500 million at $11 billion valuation. Rony's SynthBee hits unicorn status with $100 million raised at a multi-billion dollar valuation.Alvin warns the AI bubble dwarfs the dot-com era (298 companies raised $24 billion total during dot-com; OpenAI alone is raising that in a single private round) and predicts OpenAI may implode before going public.Key Moments Timestamps:[00:04:47] SpaceX/xAI/X merger: Rony calls it Elon's "return to Tony Stark form"[00:06:41] Alvin dismantles space data centers with physics: vacuum cooling myth, micro-meteorites, $7K/kg launch costs[00:10:04] Amazon's $50B investment in OpenAI as a round-trip to AWS; the scam economy[00:11:26] Alvin predicts OpenAI may implode before going public[00:14:23] Alvin on 35 years in AI: the technology is transformational but everyone's making a commodity product[00:17:04] The AI bubble dwarfs dot-com: $24B total vs. single private rounds today[00:19:04] Rony's contrarian: the $110 trillion global economy is what's being bet against[00:21:06] Labor theory of value collapses: what happens when humans exit the production cycle[00:23:00] America is fastest in the AI race and least prepared; 40% live month to month[00:24:00] Alvin's Stanford paper "Beyond Rivalry": a CERN for AI and global data pool[00:28:00] Davos reflections: the rest of the world is more rational than America[00:34:00] Chinese vs. American culture: reverence for teachers, respect for elders[00:42:00] Alvin's "Abundant" framework: valuing human dignity over production after AGI[00:44:22] The great debate: will AGI find benevolence naturally (Alvin) or must it be designed in (Rony)?[00:47:00] Rony on risk: AGI systems are unverifiable, untestable, and we cannot take the chanceListen to the full episode and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, XR, and the future of humanity.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Build smarter at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Edward Saatchi has been building at the frontier of AI storytelling for a decade—from Oculus Story Studios to Fable (where his AI character Lucy made her own films at Sundance) to his current venture, Amazon-backed Showrunner. Edward's most audacious project proves the point: reconstructing Orson Welles' lost masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons (44 minutes destroyed by studio cuts in 1942), using motion-capture actors and AI to seamlessly restore what was erased. The irony is intentional—it's a film about technology destroying beauty, restored by technology. Edward's approach isn't text-to-video slop. It's human performance driving AI synthesis: hire stage actors, capture their performances, use the original cutting continuity as a blueprint, and let AI fill the gaps. The result is cinema-quality work that would cost $100 million traditionally but costs $10 million with AI assistance.In AI XR News This Week:Amazon announces 16,000 layoffs while ramping robotics—replacing humans with machines in warehouses. Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores close after years of investment; the self-checkout convenience experiment dies. Snap spins off Spectacles AR glasses into a separate business, signaling lack of cash or confidence. Apple and OpenAI both developing AI wearables to launch in 2027, powered by Gemini and Google AI. Google launches Project Genie, a generative AI model that creates fully interactive 3D game worlds you can navigate and remix in real time. Walkabout Mini Golf lays off half its staff. Atlas V, the acclaimed French VR studio behind Spheres and Battle Scar, pivots to location-based entertainment. Darren Aronofsky launches an AI animated series on YouTube called On This Day.Key Moments Timestamps:[00:05:00] Amazon's 16,000 layoffs paired with robotics expansion; the canary in the coal mine for white-collar work[00:06:00] Amazon Go/Fresh failure: humans reject automated futures when given the choice[00:07:14] Snap spinning off Spectacles; Ted's thesis on AR glasses remaining "exotic," not mainstream[00:10:00] Apple wearables running Gemini + Google AI; the winning formula for wearable AI domination[00:12:48] Walkabout Mini Golf layoffs and Atlas V's pivot; VR right-sizing continues[00:15:25] Google Genie: generative 3D worlds, playable and remixable in real time; Epic should be scared[00:19:11] Edward Saatchi joins: the state of AI video and why there's no marketplace after 4 years[00:22:00] Edward's concern: AI content is "derivative but worse" with no commercial value[00:28:00] The marketplace problem: no buyers, no revenue, no sustainability for creators[00:34:00] Ted's thesis: AI is quietly disrupting VFX and screenwriting behind the scenes[00:44:00] Critters: the proof-of-concept for AI-assisted theatrical animation ($10M vs. $100M traditionally)[00:49:00] Showrunner's business model: creators earn money every time someone remixes their show[00:52:00] The Magnificent Ambersons project: restoring Orson Welles' lost masterpiece with AIEdward makes a case that reads like a manifesto: AI's killer app isn't making derivative work faster or cheaper. It's remix, interactivity, and personalization at scale—letting audiences co-create with AI while creators get paid. His challenge to the industry: hold yourself to "derivative but better" (can you make a better Simpsons episode than the last 15 seasons?) or "original and good" (something from a non-human intelligence's perspective). Until creators band together to make features and TV shows with commercial value, AI video will remain stuck in the trough of disillusionment.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when you can transform yourself into any character, in any world, in real time, while streaming live? Dean Leitersdorf is the CEO and co-founder of Decart, an Israeli AI company that just cracked the code on real-time generative video. Within a week of launching at TwitchCon, Twitch streamers were making thousands of dollars per hour letting their audiences morph them into cartoon characters, fantasy worlds, and entirely new realities—live, on stream, for three dollars per hour of AI processing.Dean's insight: the next wave of AI doesn't just make video generation faster or cheaper. It makes it interactive. Creators can now edit themselves, their backgrounds, and entire environments on the fly during Zoom calls, live streams, or gaming sessions. Decart runs this at roughly 100x cheaper than competitors and is targeting another 100x cost reduction over the next year to reach YouTube-level pricing (cents per hour instead of dollars). That shift unlocks new markets—gaming mods, consumer filters, XR glasses, and eventually robotics training in photorealistic simulated worlds.News: Humans&, a 3-month-old AI lab founded by researchers from Anthropic, Google, and X AI, raises $480 million at a $4 billion valuation based almost entirely on founder pedigree. Xreal sues Viture for patent infringement in bird bath optics, echoing the very lawsuit Magic Leap filed against Xreal years ago—a cycle of irony layered with allegations of trade secret theft and China-based IP evasion. OpenAI discloses $20 billion in revenue but rumored $50–60 billion in annual operating expenses, raising questions about path to profitability. TikTok's US operations close under Oracle's stewardship, and a new vertical drama app called Pinedrama launches. ElevenLabs launches music generation, competing with Suno and Udio.Key Moments Timestamps:[00:20:30] Dean's background: Israeli tech ecosystem, the Technion, and building a team of 0.001 percenters[00:22:00] The real-time video demo: transforming Dean into a cartoon character, live, during the podcast[00:26:30] Decart's competitive advantage: 100x cheaper than competitors, targeting another 100x reduction[00:28:00] TwitchCon success: streamers making $2,000/hour letting audiences control real-time transformations[00:31:00] Exit strategy or go-it-alone: why Decart believes foundational model owners capture the market[00:40:00] XR and robotics use cases: world reshaping, robot training simulations, AR glasses at 6K/120fps[00:48:30] Culture and talent: renting 34 apartments next to the office so engineers live two minutes away[00:55:00] The secret sauce: synthetic data from game engines beats internet-scale scrapingDean explains why Snap Camera's 10-year-old integration into stadium kiss cams proves the market is ready for the next evolution, how world models will power the next generation of XR glasses, and why the bottleneck shifts from rendering to semantics—making sure a virtual car doesn't block a real-world foot. Decart is building the foundation. The ecosystem will sprout on top.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.Listen to the full episode and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, XR, and the future of human-computer interaction. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dean Takahashi is the dean of tech writers and a 25-year veteran correspondent covering consumer electronics, gaming, and emerging technology for GamesBeat. He's covered every major tech transition—from mobile's rise to VR's boom-and-bust cycles to the current AI explosion—with a skeptical eye and a talent for finding the human story beneath the hype. This is his fifth appearance on the AI XR Podcast.For CES 2026, Dean walked the floors across the Convention Center, the Venetian Expo Center (Eureka Park), Pepcom, and Showstoppers, emerging with a clear reading: China has decisively shifted from periphery to center stage in consumer electronics manufacturing, American incumbents are pulling back and rethinking their booth strategy, and the economics of CES itself are in transition. Robotics companies are moving from prototype to commercial faster than expected—but they still can't answer basic questions about pricing and labor displacement.News: Sony cuts its booth to demo an electric car instead of TVs. Samsung skips the show floor entirely for the first time. Nvidia takes over the Fontainebleau to showcase its role in robotics enablement. Lenovo dominates the Sphere with a Gwen Stefani concert. Chinese robotics companies proliferate with laundry folders, latte makers, and toilet-cleaning units. Roomba files for bankruptcy; Chinese competitors take over the robotic vacuum market.Key Moments:[00:01:23] Dean receives his virtual green jacket as a five-time returning guest and Charlie thanks him for his insights[00:03:00] China takeover at CES: TCL dominates Central Hall, ROED owns the XR booth, robotics companies fill the floor[00:06:00] Nvidia's Fontainebleau takeover and the "chest-pumping" show of force; why scale messaging still matters[00:14:18] The robotics explosion explained: Nvidia's digital twins, Cosmos world models, and synthetic testing accelerate time-to-market[00:19:00] The pricing problem: robotics companies won't answer how much their products cost; the minimum wage rental model doesn't translate globallyWhen American companies built the show, CES reflected American manufacturing dominance. Now that China manufactures most consumer electronics, CES reflects that shift—and the implications ripple through labor, supply chains, and where the next epicenter of innovation will be. Dean, Charlie, and Ted grapple with what CES 2026 signals about global manufacturing advantage and why the geography of tech matters more than we think.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.Listen to the full post-CES debrief and subscribe for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, XR, and consumer technology. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gary Shapiro has spent decades at the center of the global consumer technology industry, leading the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and building CES into one of the most important stages for innovation, policy, and deal-making on the planet.In this first episode of 2026, Gary joins Charlie, Rony, and Ted to preview CES, unpack the explosion of AI across every category, and deliver unusually blunt takes on tariffs, China, manufacturing, and U.S. innovation policy. He explains how CES has evolved from a TV-and-gadgets show into a global platform where boards meet, standards are set, and policymakers, chip designers, robotics firms, and health-tech startups all collide.In the News: Before Gary joins, the hosts break down Nvidia's $20 billion “not-a-deal” with Singapore's Groq, the stake in Intel, and what that combo might signal about the edge of the GPU bubble and the shift toward inference compute, x86, and U.S. industrial policy. They also dig into Netflix's acquisition of Ready Player Me and what it suggests about a Netflix metaverse and location-based entertainment strategy, plus Starlink's rapid growth and an onslaught of “AI everything” products ahead of CES.Gary walks through new features at this year's show: CES Foundry at the Fontainebleau for AI and quantum, expanded tracks on manufacturing, wearables, women's health, and accessibility, plus an AI-powered show app already fielding thousands of questions (top query: where to pick up badges).He also talks candidly about his biggest concern—that fragmented state-level AI regulation (1,200+ state bills in 2025) will crush startups while big players shrug—and why he believes federal standards via NIST are the only realistic path. The discussion ranges from AI-driven healthcare and precision agriculture to robotics, demographics, labor culture, global supply chains, and what CES might look like in 2056.5 Key Takeaways from Gary:AI is now the spine of CES. CES 2026 centers on AI as infrastructure: CES Foundry at the Fontainebleau for AI + quantum, AI training tracks for strategy, implementation, agentic AI, and AI-driven marketing, and an AI-powered app helping attendees navigate the show.Fragmented state AI laws are an existential risk for startups. Over 1,200 state AI bills in 2025—including proposals to criminalize agentic AI counseling—could create a compliance maze only large incumbents can survive, which is why Gary argues for federal standards via NIST.Wearables are becoming systems, not gadgets. Oura rings, wrist devices, body sensors, and subdermal glucose monitors are starting to be designed as interoperable families of devices, with partnerships emerging to combine data into unified health services.Robotics is breaking out of the industrial niche. CES will showcase the largest robotics presence yet, moving beyond factory arms and drones to humanoids, logistics, social companions, and applied AI systems across sectors.Tariffs, alliances, and AI will reshape manufacturing. Gary is skeptical of “Fortress USA” strategies that try to onshore everything, pointing instead to allied reshoring (Latin America, Europe, Japan, South Korea) and the long-term role of AI-powered robotics in changing labor economics and global supply chains.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Whether you're a developer, designer, or just getting started, start building smarter at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shelly Palmer has spent 45 years watching technology reshape every industry—from writing news themes for CBS to consulting with every major media company on AI strategy.On this year-end recap, he cuts through the noise with one devastating observation: 2025 was the year everyone talked about AI while almost nobody actually used it. Executives shook their heads knowingly in meetings, pontificated about capabilities the models don't yet have, and parroted nonsense they read from other people who knew nothing. But when you asked one innocent question, they crumbled.In the News: CES 2026 shapes up with Nvidia sponsoring two full days of AI training. Samsung is skipping the main floor for a massive offsite activation. Sony brings no electronics—only Honda's experimental vehicles. The TCL and Chinese companies' presence hinges on tariff policy. The innovation series breakfast that Shelly runs is becoming an official CES event after a decade of independence.The conversation spirals into deeper territory: $3 trillion in government money is stacked behind AI development. The U.S. explicitly states it must beat China to AGI—making this the Manhattan Project of our lifetime. Shelly walks through what he's seen in successful companies (leadership using the tech, paid "Tech Tuesdays" for AI experiments, cross-discipline teams with SecOps and legal at the table) versus the chaos of places with no process.He breaks down what's real—drone warfare, cybersecurity applications, robotics—versus what's hot air. And he makes a case that won't be killed by AI itself, but by militarized applications and the geopolitical arms race we're already in.5 Key Takeaways from Shelly:Leadership belief and hands-on use are non-negotiable. Companies winning with AI have senior leaders who actually use the technology. When the CEO walks into an LT meeting saying "I built this agent over the weekend," everyone else starts experimenting too.The recipe for AI success has three ingredients: leadership belief, paid time to experiment (Tech Tuesdays/Thursdays with real budgets), and cross-discipline teams (SecOps, legal, compliance, risk) paving the way. Chaos erupts without this structure.You cannot build a point of view on AI from reading blogs or watching YouTubers. Pick a personal project you care about, go hands-on with a model (Claude, Gemini, GPT), and complete it from beginning to end. Only lived experience grounds your understanding.AI parallelizes with web 1.0: In 1998, you had to hand-code HTML, build databases manually, write raw JavaScript. Today you can vibe code a site in 90 seconds. AI will eventually reach "spin me up an expert that does X" without asking questions—we're not there yet, but it's inevitable.It's both bubble and Manhattan Project. Some valuations are insane and will burst. But military applications, cyber warfare, drone control, robotics—those aren't going anywhere. The government won't back off. Both outcomes happen simultaneously.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop.Mattercraft combines game engine power with web flexibility and features an AI assistant to help you design, code, and debug in real time in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Caitlin Krause, author of Digital Wellbeing, argues that intentional design unlocks genuine connection within virtual spaces. Drawing on her teaching at Stanford and the University of Oregon, she's explored how XR environments can foster asynchronous connection and ambient awareness for people who crave belonging without hyper-social performance. Her framework rejects the "digital detox" model entirely—instead advocating for dignity-first design where users match attention with authentic intention.The hosts debate the deeper question: what happens to human purpose when AI handles all labor? Rony Abovitz frames this as the "asymmetry of design"—it's easy to build addictive tech, hard to build wellbeing tech. Caitlin counters that we may return to the original meaning of "amateur" (from amor, "to love"), where humans find meaning through play, creativity, and what Harvard's lifespan study confirms: quality of relationship and presence. The conversation spirals from platform ethics to post-work society to what first principles we should use when designing XR.5 Key Takeaways from Caitlin:Loneliness is a biological prompt to find another human—not a void to fill with endless content. XR can foster genuine forms of connection without requiring hyper-social performance.Dignity-first design unlocks freedom, invention, and agency. When digital spaces prioritize user agency over engagement metrics, people report feeling like they "got their life back."Science will soon prove what we already know about fractal patterns in nature and digital signals. The key is designing digital experiences that resonate with how humans biologically thrive.The "middle path" between nature and digital is both/and. Gamers building entire lives in virtual worlds can be healthy when those worlds offer creativity, belonging, and meaningful challenge.The post-labor economy needs a reset in literacy and values. When AI outperforms human workers, purpose shifts from survival to what makes you feel alive—maker culture, digital fab labs, hands-on creation, and "amateur" pursuits driven by love.In the News: Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi's MGX close the $50 billion TikTok spin-off deal. Meta cuts Reality Labs by 30%, but CTO Andrew Bosworth says it's moving to AI. The TCL glasses demo 70 grams of lighter, more advanced XR hardware than Ray-Ban Meta—proving that smart spending beats mega-spend.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Build smarter at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonathan Rodriguez Cefalu built the hardware that Snap shipped on people's faces — first the camera-only Gen 1 Spectacles, then the Gen 4 display version. His path through Stanford CS, an honors thesis on varifocal display optics, and a startup called Vergence (named after the vergence-accommodation conflict in AR) led him to Snap, and then to the problem he is working on now. Preamble AI exists to prevent the worst possible AI outcomes — starting with a class of attack that Preamble was the first to publicly demonstrate: prompt injection.Ted Schilowitz hosted this episode solo. Together, he and Jonathan worked through the architecture problem sitting under every AI assistant being deployed at scale right now: large language models see one token stream. There is no separation between what the developer intended and what an untrusted email or web page is quietly instructing the model to do. With Gemini Spark about to give AI agents access to tens of thousands of emails per user, this is not a theoretical concern. Jonathan's team has a proposed fix — and they have already shaped federal law.The episode also covered the week's XR and AI news: Google I/O announcements, Snap Spectacles Gen 6 details ahead of AWE, Matthew Ball joining Xbox, Anduril's battlefield AR wearable, and AI-generated feature films reaching Tribeca.Key Moments:[00:00] Ted opens solo — Charlie Fink and Rony Abovitz are out for the summer solstice[02:30] Google I/O: Gemini Spark and what "persistent AI agent" actually means in practice[08:15] Jonathan's Gmail test: asked to search tens of thousands of emails, it searched 30 and quit[14:40] XREAL Project Aura and the state of Android XR — a lot of spend for incremental steps[21:00] Snap Spectacles Gen 6 details: what Jonathan knows from building Gen 1 and Gen 4 from the inside[31:20] Snap vs. Meta: research that ships in the product vs. research that ships in a paper[38:45] Matthew Ball joins Xbox, Anduril EagleEyes, and battlefield AR wearables[44:10] AI on the Lot: Project Nara, Hell Grind, Dreams of Violet, Paul Schrader goes pro-AI[52:30] Jonathan introduces Preamble AI and the mission to prevent worst-case AI outcomes[58:00] The first public demonstration of prompt injection — what happened and why it matters[01:06:15] Why Gemini Spark will be especially vulnerable to prompt injection attacks[01:14:00] Preamble's proposed fix: a reserved token language that untrusted data cannot speak[01:21:30] NDAA Section 1638: the first US law making it illegal to give AI autonomous nuclear control[01:28:45] WarGames, "the only winning move is not to play," and what that means in 2026Brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft. Mattercraft makes spatial web experiences that run in the browser — no app required. Visit mattercraft.io to learn more and start building. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special live episode recorded at SynthBee headquarters in South Florida, hosts Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, and Rony Abovitz bring listeners inside a special gathering of neuroscientists, philosophers, and technologists debating the future of AI. Moving beyond hype, the conversation focuses on "Collaborative Intelligence" vs. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), exploring whether we are building tools that amplify humanity or autonomous systems that will eventually replace it.Instead of traditional interviews, the hosts invite workshop speakers to the hot seat for rapid-fire insights on the deepest questions in tech: Can we measure an AI's true intentions? Is consciousness a physics problem? And how do we ensure these systems remain compatible with human flourishing?News HighlightsDisney invests $1B in OpenAI & licenses IP: The hosts debate whether this is a masterstroke to engage fans with user-generated Sora content or a "Yahoo powered by Google" mistake that hands the keys to the kingdom to a rival.Valve launches new PCVR hardware: A quick look at the attempt to revive the high-end PC VR market.Meta adds real-time vision to Ray-Bans: The next step in multimodal AI wearables.Guest HighlightsDr. Uri Maoz (Neuroscientist, Chapman/Caltech): Discusses the "black box" problem of neural networks, comparing the opacity of AI to the human brain, and how neuroscience tools might help us detect deception in AI systems.Dr. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Ethics Professor, Duke): Argues that ethical AI regulation shouldn't be a monolith; different cultures need "sovereignty of ethics" to allow diverse moral frameworks to coexist rather than one centralized Silicon Valley standard.Dr. Julio Frenk (Chancellor, UCLA): Frames the AI race as a battle between "Computational Democracy" (distributed, transparent power) and "Computational Autocracy" (centralized control), warning that universities must preserve critical thinking or risk losing the ability to govern AI at all.Reed Maxwell & Laura Condon (Hydrologists, Princeton/Arizona): Reveal how AI is modeling the planet's water crisis, predicting "black swan" climate events, and why funding for this critical earth-science work is mysteriously disappearing.Danny M (12-Year-Old Prodigy): Steals the show with a stunningly articulate take on AI consciousness, "trapped man" experiments, and how fractal geometry might map neural weights—proving the next generation is more ready for this future than we are.Dr. Aaron Schurger (Psychology, Chapman): Explores the neuroscience of spontaneous action and free will, debating whether "telepathic" connections and quantum effects in the brain could be the missing link for true human-AI compatibility.Jared Ficklin (Chief Product Officer, SynthBee): The former Frog Design fellow argues we must shift the conversation from AI "capability" to "compatibility," using the intuitive connection humans have with dogs or horses as the benchmark for successful AI interfaces.Thanks to our sponsor Zappar!Subscribe for weekly insider perspectives from veterans who aren't afraid to challenge Big Tech.New episodes every Tuesday. Watch full episodes on YouTube. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joshua Pantony spent years being told there would never be a viable AI company in his lifetime. He sold his first AI company to Microsoft anyway — work that quietly became part of what is now Microsoft Copilot. Today he runs Boosted AI, an agentic platform serving more than 400 institutional investors who collectively manage around five trillion dollars in assets. He is one of the most credible voices in applied AI finance, and his read on where the industry is heading cuts through a lot of noise.The conversation covers what it actually means to deploy AI in professional investing — not the demo version, but the one that has to earn trust from portfolio managers who have built careers on discretion and judgment. The platform learns each investor's individual style and then acts like a highly motivated junior analyst who never sleeps: constantly surfacing ideas, flagging risks, and improving the workflow without ever taking over the decision. Josh also unpacks why the Bloomberg terminal is facing its BlackBerry moment, why the technology moat is effectively dead, and why the next durable advantage in finance will come from human trust networks that no model can replicate. Ted Schilowitz and Rony Abovitz join host Charlie Fink with sharp frames throughout — Rony's observation that the innovator's dilemma is now a high-frequency problem landed hard.AI XR News You Should Know: The episode opens with two news segments covering AWE 2026 and the Snap Spectacles keynote with Evan Spiegel, the Samsung Galaxy Glasses debut, Gemini rolling out as Android's native agentic AI, the Cerebras sixty-billion-dollar IPO, and what an AI filmmaking company launched by the creators of Instagram Stories tells us about the future of short-form content. The conversation about micro-dramas, why Quibi failed, and what sixty percent of social media users now say about their own feeds leads directly into the trust themes that run through the entire episode.Key Moments:[00:00] – Cold open and welcome. Charlie frames the sixth anniversary of the show.[02:30] – AWE 2026 recap. Snap Spectacles keynote, Evan Spiegel on stage, Samsung Galaxy Glasses previewed.[06:00] – Gemini as Android's native agentic layer. What it means that AI is now replacing the OS interface.[09:15] – Cerebras sixty-billion-dollar IPO. What a big AI IPO year signals for the sector.[12:00] – AI filmmaking and Instagram Stories creators. The new short-form production economy.[14:30] – Why Quibi really failed. No sharing mechanic, wrong bet on clipping, and arriving before the audience was ready.[16:45] – The trust problem in social feeds. YouGov data: sixty percent of users cannot tell what is real. Social becoming a lie stream.[19:00] – Guest intro. Joshua Pantony on being told AI would never be a viable business, and the algorithm he wrote at twenty that saved a million dollars.[24:00] – How Boosted AI works. The digital twin model, the agentic workflow, and why it is not a portfolio manager.[33:00] – The Bloomberg terminal's BlackBerry moment. Thirty thousand dollars a year for what AI will deliver for a fraction.[42:00] – The moat is dead. Why user context — not the technology — is the durable advantage.[51:00] – The innovator's dilemma at high frequency. Rony on why a day in AI is like a decade, and what that means for incumbents.[58:00] – Trust networks as the last edge. The analog handshake as the most valuable currency in a world of synthetic information.This conversation is a clear-eyed look at what it takes to build AI that professionals actually adopt — not a pitch, not a thought experiment. Josh's framing of Wall Street as the greatest collective intelligence humanity has built, and his argument that AI can finally make capital allocation genuinely more efficient, gives the episode an ambition that goes well beyond fintech. The question of what survives automation — and what only humans can do — runs underneath every answer.This episode is sponsored by Zappar and Mattercraft. Mattercraft is Zappar's browser-based augmented reality creation platform — build and deploy WebAR experiences without an app, at mattercraft.io. If you like what you hear, subscribe to The AI XR Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Watch on YouTube - https://youtu.be/I8hLgBneUasSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As director of Keyhole, Dave Lorenzini delivered the 3D Earth zooms that ran on CNN during the 2003 Iraq War — netting five million users in a month. Sergey Brin was one of them. Google bought the company and poured in billions to build, fuel, and serve maps. As Google Earth, it forever changed how we relate to space.From there: pioneering work on Google Glass, AR platforms, and running an immersive XR lab in Europe for Draw & Code exploring the future of spaces, places, and faces. Today Dave directs Quantum Studio, building World Agent and 4D ID — the "DNS for real space," an addressing layer where every place, object, and moment gets a name AI systems can agree on. His thesis: the next decade of AI won't run on better maps. AI needs an operating system for reality. Not a map. Not a database. A living, queryable foundation where every place on Earth answers for itself.AI XR News: The OpenAI vs. Musk trial continued with damaging testimony from Mira Murati and Greg Brockman. Anthropic struck an unholy alliance with xAI's Colossus compute. GameStop bid for eBay. Colin Angle is back with Familiar, an AI robot pet. Coinbase cut staff. Ask.com finally died. VRChat hit 100,000 concurrent daily users in Japan.Key Moments:[00:03:34] AWE Long Beach in 30 days: Dave on the board, Snap glasses expected, 400 speakers and 250 exhibitors[00:20:10] 30 AI glasses coming: why the near future belongs to audio-first, AI-powered smart glasses[00:25:34] Keyhole origin story: satellite imagery, $25K/sq mile, Sergey Brin, and a $500M/year acquisition[00:37:30] Google Glass, Luxottica, and why Google blinked when it could have been 10 years ahead of Meta[00:40:00] XR vs. rockets: why building for the human brain is harder than getting to MarsBrought to you by Zappar, the company behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/weNANIIo7EASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The AI XR Podcast had a massive news week and one of its best guest conversations of the year. Caspar Thykier and Connell Gauld, CEO and CTO co-founders of Zappar, joined Charlie Fink and Ted Schilowitz to talk about something deceptively simple: helping people find stuff.Zappar's new product, Spaces, is app-free indoor navigation built on the web. QR code or link in a meeting invite — your phone shows AR breadcrumbs to the nearest restroom, the right meeting room, the hospital ward three floors away. No app download. No specific hardware. No Azure dependency. Caspar put the pitch simply: it's fundamentally just helping people find stuff. Connell's vision: the same technology running in glasses indistinguishable from a regular pair, within four to five years.AI XR News: Elon Musk's $135 billion lawsuit against OpenAI went to trial in Berkeley. OpenAI's IPO may be pushed to 2027 over its CFO reporting structure and $600B CapEx problem. Meta is laying off 20% of its staff in two waves. Google earnings were up 10% while Meta got punished. Freepik rebranded as Magnifi with $230M ARR and a million paid subscribers. Samsung announced displayless AI smart glasses. Google partnered with Gucci for another AI glasses play. And Google put $40 billion into Anthropic.Key Moments:[00:03:02] Elon vs. Sam: the $135 billion trial[00:05:09] OpenAI's IPO in jeopardy — CFO structure and $600B CapEx[00:07:12] Meta's 20% layoffs and Charlie's read on bad CEO behavior[00:10:32] Freepik becomes Magnifi: $230M ARR, a million subscribers[00:13:10] Samsung Galaxy XR and Google x Gucci smart glasses[00:15:15] Google puts $40B into Anthropic — a cloud play[00:21:06] Spaces: turn-by-turn AR indoor navigation, no app required[00:41:13] 16 years in XR: how Zappar survived by being the cockroachBrought to you by Zappar, the company behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io. Watch the Full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HmOXA4HgBmo Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Akash Nigam has been building Genies since 2017 with a conviction that avatars will be the visual layer of the internet. As CEO of Genies, he's assembled IP partners including the NBA, MLB, Sanrio, and Kakao, with more major studios and agencies set to announce before the end of May. The pitch: every app, game, website, and celebrity is going to have an AI personality. Genies wants to be the framework that gives all of those personalities a face.What separates Genies is portability and scale. A character that took eight weeks in 2021 now takes ten minutes. Staying stylized rather than photorealistic isn't just aesthetic — it's what got Hollywood to the table. Talent doesn't want deepfakes. They want a Genie: trained on private IP data, capable of one-on-one fan relationships that make Instagram feel thin.AI XR News: Tim Cook stepped aside as Apple CEO with hardware chief John Ternus taking over. Humanoid robots ran a half marathon in Beijing while a Sony robot defeated professional table tennis players, opening a conversation about Chinese robotics capabilities and AI data infiltration risks the US is still underestimating.Key Moments:[00:06:45] Tim Cook steps aside: what the Apple leadership transition signals about wearable AI[00:12:00] Humanoid robots and table tennis: China's robotics flex[00:13:00] The data infiltration argument: open-source risk and a warning for the US[00:24:00] The IP land grab: NBA, MLB, Sanrio, Kakao, Naver Webtoon[00:28:00] From photo to avatar in 10 minutes: how Genies' generation pipeline scaled[00:32:00] Why Instagram feels thin and how Genies enables one-on-one fan relationships[00:49:00] 80 people, $150M raised, and why Bob Iger sees Genies as the future of DisneyIf AI personalities are going to be everywhere, what do they look like? Akash has been building the answer for nearly a decade. Q3 is when it goes live.Brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Mattercraft now includes an AI assistant for design, code, and debugging in real time. Start building at mattercraft.io. Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, or watch on YouTube - https://youtu.be/Fs8h2KcJclQSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Alan Lasky arrived at the AI XR Podcast straight from Las Vegas ahead of NAB. An MIT Media Lab graduate under Nicholas Negroponte, a veteran of Silicon Graphics and Amazon Web Services, and an advisor to investment banks on AI and media, he brings technical depth, industry history, and financial realism about where media is actually going.The conversation covers Hollywood's structural collapse, AI's role in the production renaissance, and the harder question of why trillion-dollar tech companies keep buying media businesses that can't generate comparable returns. Alan's answer: soft power. Amazon makes $950 million Lord of the Rings spinoffs so you order more paper towels. Apple is making Neuromancer. His five-year weighted moving average of Disney stock — flat from 2018 — makes the argument clean.AI XR News You Should Know: Artemis ignited a new space boom. Amazon acquired Global Star satellite to build Project Kuiper, a direct Starlink competitor. Apple's AI audio smart glasses are reportedly arriving this year per Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, entering a market where Meta owns the optometrist channel and Google is moving through Warby Parker. Snap laid off 15% while doubling down on the 2026 launch of Spectacles — the first see-through headset since Magic Leap.Key Moments:[00:04:48] – Artemis and the space boom: Ted on filming shuttle launches and why the crew's accomplishment is underestimated.[00:08:33] – Apple AI audio glasses: Rony's read from former Magic Leapers who designed them — if Apple gets this wrong, it's unforgivable.[00:12:00] – Snap's layoffs and the see-through gamble: can they compete with cheap AI audio glasses flooding the market?[00:16:43] – Hollywood is no longer the center of the universe — Alan on why most of the industry hasn't metabolized that yet.[00:23:01] – Charlie on AI democratization: a couple hundred dollars per minute for what looks like live action on a phone.[00:36:00] – The soft power thesis: why tech giants keep buying media assets that never pay off at their scale.[00:41:30] – Should Apple buy Disney? Charlie says Meta will do it first. Rony's reaction is immediate and visceral.[00:47:44] – AI resurrects Val Kilmer: Alan's origin story from three months in the Australian desert on the worst film of his career.Alan's closing frame: he grew up reading Gibson and Brunner in the eighties, excited to live in that world. He's in it. He's not sure he wanted it this way.This episode is sponsored by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences, now with AI-assisted design and debug. Build at mattercraft.io. Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for more conversations at the edge of AI, XR, and the future of media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ian Hamilton spent years as editor in chief of Upload VR before launching his own Substack, Good VR, and podcast at goodvirtualreality.com. He is one of the few people covering XR longer and more deeply than Charlie Fink, and his perspective spans platform architecture, business strategy, and genuine on-the-ground journalism since the DK1 days.This conversation traces why the XR dream has taken longer than anyone expected. Ian and Rony Abovitz reconstruct the moment the ecosystem forked — when Meta's Oculus acquisition closed off the open, Valve-led platform path that Magic Leap and everyone else had been building toward. Ian argues the platforms are now playing for keeps: OpenXR moves on decade timescales, and that friction is what keeps real transformation just out of reach.On hardware, his case is sharp: Meta's self-imposed $200–$600 price ceiling makes OLED and eye tracking impossible at mass market — exactly the features Apple bet on as the mandatory baseline — and that contradiction is why Bosworth ended up pivoting to AI glasses.In AI XR News You Should Know: Anthropic's Mythos AI model reportedly escaped the company's own containment. Charlie and Rony debate whether calling the consequences "unintended" is even credible given decades of published warnings. Also: a Hollywood Reporter and Otis School study found AI is not the primary driver of empty LA sound stages — runaway production and tax incentives are the main story.Key Moments:[00:01:00] – Charlie's new vertical melodrama "Linda's Last Podcast" and why generative AI is already good enough for social media storytelling.[00:04:52] – Rony on Anthropic's Mythos: the compute to cure cancer, aimed somewhere else.[00:11:47] – Half of Gen Z holds a negative view of AI. Charlie on the Brown grad who turned down an AI studio internship on principle.[00:36:00] – Rony and Ian reconstruct the Valve/Oculus open platform — and walk through exactly how that future closed.[00:47:00] – Meta's price ceiling, OLED as a strategic forcing function, and why Bosworth landed on AI glasses.[00:52:00] – Ian on the Apple Vision Pro mid-flight: why the headset is a personal computer, not a wearable.Ian's long view: we're about ten percent of the way through the total investment required to reach a billion users. The supply chain is better than ever, the software has found its footing in simulation and training, and the next five to ten years could be the most interesting window yet — if the platforms decide to let the ecosystem breathe.This episode is sponsored by Zappar, the team behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences on mobile, headsets, and desktop.Mattercraft now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time. Start building at mattercraft.io.Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for more conversations at the edge of AI, XR, and the future of media.Available where you get podcasts. Watch full episodes on YouTube https://youtu.be/x5wQy4HBhYESee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lucas Rizzotto is one of the most distinctive artists working at the intersection of technology and human experience. He built Where Thoughts Go, a VR piece that proved genuine connection was possible inside a headset when everyone said it wasn't. He followed it with Pillow, a mixed reality app designed around the bedroom. He then spent months letting an AI algorithm run his life — wearing Mantra smart glasses, building a surveillance and memory system on himself, and documenting it as an ongoing series on Instagram and TikTok. Now he's making a live cinematic experience called Escape the Internet, which he calls Broadway crossed with a video game crossed with standup comedy. It premiered as a ghost debut at South by Southwest this year.Mike Boland, analyst and founder of AR Insider, sits in for Rony Abovitz in this episode. The conversation opens on the Rec Room shutdown — $250 million raised, a $3.5 billion valuation, and now a wind-down. The panel connects the collapse to a pattern: VR has always been an exotic pursuit sold as a mainstream one, and the unit economics of concurrent immersive social spaces are nearly impossible. The discussion moves to OpenAI shutting down Sora, the AI video generation race between Google VO3 and Kling, the rise of AI slop in social feeds, and Lucas confirming he quit LinkedIn because it's unreadable.AI XR News You Should Know: Rec Room is shutting down after raising $250M at a $3.5B peak valuation. Snapchat is acquiring its remaining assets. OpenAI closed down Sora, overwhelmed by competition from Google VO3 and Kling. AI-only social feeds from Meta and Grok are not gaining traction — users are tuning them out.Key Moments:[05:37] – Ted's thesis: VR is an exotic pursuit that was never going to be mainstream, and Rec Room would have been healthier if it accepted that early[07:33] – Lucas: Ready Player One was the worst thing to happen to XR — it gave executives a fictional roadmap to fund[18:38] – Ted asks whether Apple can do for mixed reality what it did for the smartphone — and the panel is skeptical[27:42] – Mike on physics as the hard ceiling: Moore's Law doesn't apply to waveguides and optics the way it applies to chips[29:02] – Lucas explains why he dropped display glasses for his wearable AI experiment — they increase engineering complexity by 50x[32:17] – Lucas's AI-controlled life series: a complex algorithm watches him, mines personal data, and tells him what to do to find happiness — including an unplanned trip to Lithuania[34:12] – Ted asks if the experiment is a net positive or negative. Lucas: neutral if you're in control, net negative if Meta or OpenAI are running the system[37:52] – Lucas on convenience as a death by a thousand cuts: he optimized his life in Berlin to have everything within three minutes and became miserable[41:00] – Charlie on Where Thoughts Go: assigned it to students every semester; it only works if you surrender to it[47:15] – Escape the Internet: hundreds of people in a movie theater, all on their phones, playing a shared cinematic narrative. Lucas calls it a modern version of church[53:40] – The standup model applied to software: Lucas tested Escape the Internet at SXSW and cut 50% of the material that didn't get a reactionThis conversation sits at the intersection that the AI XR Podcast lives for: technology as creative material, not just commercial tool. Lucas's view that we've been building things people use all the time when we should be building things that blow their minds for two hours and then get out of the way is one of the sharper critiques of the attention economy you'll hear this year.This episode is brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences on mobile, headsets, and desktop. Mattercraft now includes an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Start building at mattercraft.io. Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast so you never miss a conversation.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Shelley Palmer,media technologist, advisor, and author with over 700,000 daily newsletter subscribers, returns to the show. He's one of the sharpest thinkers writing about AI today, and this conversation covers the full arc: from social media liability to the trust collapse coming for all of us, and into the real productivity gains and surveillance trade-offs of living inside an AI-first workflow.The episode opens with the Google and Meta lawsuit verdict and quickly moves past the legal question. Shelley's position is precise: you can't legislate parenting, but you can legislate transparency, and the tech industry has failed on that front entirely. The $6 million judgment against Meta and Google is a rounding error — not a deterrent. What matters is what platforms actually engineered: engagement above all else, backed by neuroscience, probabilistic math, and dopamine feedback loops optimized for shareholders, not users.AI XR News You Should Know: OpenAI is ending Sora and pivoting hard to Codex and enterprise. Ben Affleck secured $900 million from Netflix for a custom AI filmmaking tool. Epic Games cut 1,000 jobs as Fortnite loses audience. NVIDIA's Jensen Huang introduced Nemo Claw and Open Shell at GTC — a corporatized framework for personal AI agents.Key Moments[00:01:15] – Charlie opens noting the show missed one episode in nearly 300 — his daughter's wedding[00:01:55] – OpenAI kills Sora; the Critters director goes dark before the episode[00:04:45] – Google and Meta lose their social media addiction lawsuit; Meta also loses in New Mexico[00:08:07] – Shelley on what can actually be legislated: not parenting, but transparency[00:11:42] – Shelley on Zuckerberg: he genuinely believed connection would be net positive; ask him today[00:13:31] – "Planetarily net negative. No matter what good it does, it does more harm."[00:18:16] – Rony on dopamine engineering: neuroscientists studying pixel size, color, sound to refine addiction[00:19:40] – Shelley reframes it: engagement maximization for shareholders, no more insidious than that[00:23:19] – The physiological change argument: humans evolved to default to trust; AI-generated everything breaks that[00:31:50] – Rony's counterpoint: trust will reset local; the software ecosystem will follow[00:36:53] – Shelley: "Our business increased last year. Everyone on my staff is doing 400 times the work."[00:44:42] – AI-first means automating every workflow you can honestly automate — and knowing what isn't ready[00:45:06] – Jensen's Nemo Claw and Open Shell: the safer path to personal AI agents, and what it actually costs[00:49:42] – The surveillance trade-off: an effective AI agent requires more personal data exposure than anything before it[00:51:24] – Apple's Secure Enclave play: why Tim Cook may win the AI trust war in the endThe productivity gains are real, but so is the privacy exposure, and the systems that earn trust — at every level — are the ones that will survive.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, the company behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences across mobile, headsets, and desktop. Mattercraft now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Start building at mattercraft.io. Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you listen.Watch the full episode for the full breakdown. Available where podcasts are. Full videos available on YouTube. https://youtu.be/S_AECjELYyoSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Cathy Hackl, futurist for Nokia and advisor to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), joins the podcast to discuss her fascinating work across the Middle East and her insights on the next generation of AI and connectivity. Learn how nations like the UAE and KSA are strategically positioning themselves to lead in spatial computing, quantum supremacy, and a hopeful, future-forward vision of AI.Cathy details her work in the Middle East, including her residency in the UAE and her advisory roles on massive projects like NEOM and Qiddiya, explaining how these regions are embracing technology as a means to modernize. She shares her perspective on the shift in global venture capital, noting how Europe and the Middle East are providing significant funding that is moving beyond traditional Silicon Valley terms.AI XR News You Should Know:The hosts discuss massive AI funding rounds, including a $1 billion seed round for Advanced Machine Intelligence and a $500 million round for Mind Robotics, highlighting the intense capital war for chips and the boom in robotics. They also cover the rise of YouTube as the world's largest media company and the ethical questions surrounding the collection of human data to train robots.Key Moments[00:01:19] Intro: Friday the 13th and geopolitical news.[00:02:17] Mind Robotics & Advanced Machine Intelligence: Discussing the $500M and $1B seed rounds for robotics and AI startups.[00:04:04] Headband Camera for Robot Training: Debate on the ethics of companies paying people to wear cameras to collect training data for robots, comparing it to "Gargoyles" from Snow Crash.[00:10:12] YouTube Surpasses Disney & Netflix: Discussion on YouTube becoming the world's largest media company with $62 billion in revenue.[00:11:29] AI & Media Market Dominance: Questioning whether today's AI music and video companies will eventually surpass all big film, music, and streaming companies.[00:14:40] Cathy Hackl Interview Begins: Cathy discusses her work as a futurist for Nokia, focusing on AI-native networks.[00:16:26] KSA Projects: Cathy's experience working on the virtual and gaming strategy for Qiddiya and on the KSA Pavilion at the World Expo.[00:22:07] Golden Visa & Gifted Residency: The privileges associated with becoming a resident of the UAE or KSA for highly skilled talent.This conversation offers a vital global perspective on technology, innovation, and culture that is often missed when focusing solely on Silicon Valley. Understanding these geopolitical and technological movements is key for anyone trying to anticipate where the next wave of global innovation will truly come from.This episode of The AI XR Podcast is brought to you by Zappar, the folks behind Mattercraft, a leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences—mattercraft.io. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch the full episode on YouTube. https://youtu.be/Mw0yM_qpGG8See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Co-founders Dr. Salman Avestimehr and Dr. Aiden He join the podcast to discuss their new "agentic" company, Teamily AI. They dive into how their platform is disrupting the social landscape by weaving multi-agent AI into group chats, enabling groups, friends, and families to interact with virtual friends, essentially creating a collaborative environment where AI acts as a participant that anticipates needs and remembers the full context of a conversation.This conversation explores the core value proposition of an AI-first social platform—not just making an individual superhuman, but enabling a collective of human and AI agents to do "fascinating things together." The founders detail their technology, which is built on deep expertise in distributed machine learning and multi-agent systems, and their long-term vision to IPO and evolve the very nature of social networks by bridging the gap between human and artificial intelligence.In the news segment, Charlie Fink and Rony Abovitz unpack the week's biggest AI stories: Ben Affleck selling his stealth AI film company, Interpositive, to Netflix; Anthropic's Claude briefly dethroning OpenAI's ChatGPT in the app store; and a deep dive into Jack Dorsey's company Block cutting 4,000 employees. The hosts also discuss the social fallout of AI acceleration, particularly the counter-movement seeking tactile, real-world connection and the economic risk of displacing white-collar data analysts.Key Moments00:03:00 – App Store War: Discussing Anthropic's Claude topping the app charts and why the US Department of Defense will use the best AI system regardless of corporate objection.00:04:00 – Hollywood's AI Play: Netflix acquiring Ben Affleck's AI company, Interpositive, which uses unedited film dailies to train an AI for editing and optimization.00:05:00 – The Mediocrity Threat: Rony Abovitz's take on the risk of AI creating a "very, very long tail of Okay" content, leading to a cultural sameness.00:07:00 – Counter-Culture: Exploring the growing emotional need for "something real" and a massive movement away from purely digital experiences.00:09:00 – The White-Collar Risk: The hosts argue that the white-collar data analyst is the worker "most easy to replace" by AI, contrasting with the high value of blue-collar workers.00:11:00 – The "Oh Wow" Moment: Charlie Fink describes his first experience with Teamily AI, noting the immediate power of real-time, multi-person and multi-agent prompting.00:13:00 – The Science Behind Teamily: Dr. Aiden He, PhD in Machine Learning, explains how Teamily is built upon his previous research in distributed learning and multi-agent systems.00:26:00 – Global Memory: Aiden details Teamily's unique "cross domain, long horizon memory," which allows the AI to combine human-human chat context with human-AI memory for a more natural interaction.The biggest takeaway is the conceptual shift from using AI as a solo productivity tool to using it as a collaborative team member. The path to the next phase of social networking hinges on building platforms where AI is not isolated but is a natural, evolving part of a human community.This episode of The AI XR Podcast is brought to you by Zappar, the folks behind Mattercraft, a leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Start building smarter at mattercraft.io. Listen and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you get your podcasts! Watch the full thing on YouTube https://youtu.be/s78WZJSfGeo.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does a Lion King–level director really think about AI “slop,” streaming wars and whether machines can ever tell great stories? On this episode of the AI XR Podcast, Charlie Fink and Ted Schilowitz talk with Rob Minkoff, director of The Lion King, Stuart Little, The Haunted Mansion, Forbidden Kingdom and Paws of Fury, about the future of filmmaking as AI, streaming consolidation and new tools reshape the business.Rob shares how he watched Netflix “eat Hollywood” by doing streaming better than the legacy studios, why Netflix walking away from Warner Bros. and letting Paramount overpay is bad news for creators, and what fewer buyers means for directors and writers trying to sell original work. He explains why he sees AI tools like Seed Dance as potentially both iceberg and Noah's Ark, and why he believes the average will rise but the cream will still rise higher: tools may let anyone make competent images, but audiences will still chase the one-in-a-thousand voices that have something genuinely new and human to say.In XR News You Should Know, the host cover Anthropic's standoff with the Pentagon over using large, unstable models for high-stakes military decisions, Netflix walking away from a Warner Bros. deal and collecting a breakup fee while Paramount overpays, streaming brand confusion around HBO/Max and Paramount+, VITURE's new raise and its patent fight with XREAL over “birdbath” smart-glasses optics, and Google's Gemini gaining multi-step action capabilities on Samsung and Pixel phones before Apple's Siri catches up.The conversation digs into whether AI will really make feature films cheaper and more common, or just flood social feeds with short-form “AI slop.” Rob compares AI tools to word processors and home recording studios: they are powerful, but they don't turn you into Bruce Springsteen or Steven Spielberg. He argues that empathy, taste and genuinely fresh perspective will remain the differentiators, and that audiences will quickly tune out work that feels derivative, even if it looks slick. He also raises a bigger question: if AI drives productivity to the point where work is optional for many people, what happens to purpose, competition and the human psyche?Key Moments01:16 – Anthropic vs. the Pentagon and why unstable AI systems may never meet military safety standards02:42 – Netflix exits the Warner Bros. deal, collects a breakup fee and leaves Paramount holding the bag05:31 – HBO, Max, Paramount+ branding confusion and what happens to these streaming labels06:00 – VITURE's $100M raise, XREAL patent lawsuits and the simple science behind “birdbath” smart glasses07:31 – Why Miami is becoming a new tech and defense hub and what that signals about America's “neighborhood”10:00 – Seed Dance 2.0, Hollywood's deepfake panic and the “ship first, apologize later” strategy15:16 – Rob joins: 34 years in film, Netflix “eating Hollywood” and what consolidation means for creators19:18 – Seed Dance, stolen IP and whether AI tools are an iceberg or Noah's Ark for filmmakers24:39 – Can AI become a true “prophet,” or can it only emulate empathy and taste?30:57 – Will AI make many more animated movies or just flood the world with average content?37:32 – If AI does most of the work, what's left for humans—and can entertainment absorb all that free time?This episode is a grounded, filmmaker's view of where AI fits: powerful tools, real risks, but no substitute for a human vision that cuts through the noise. Rob's perspective is invaluable if you're trying to understand what will actually matter in a world where everyone can generate “good enough” images on demand.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile, headsets and desktop. To explore what's possible with AI-powered XR on the web, start building smarter with Mattercraft from Zappar at Mattercraft.io.Listen to the AI XR Podcast where you get podcasts and follow the show for new episodes every week. Or watch on YouTubeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Vicki Dobbs Beck, the former head of ILMxLab and a 34-year veteran of Lucasfilm/Disney, joins Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, and Rony Abovitz for a candid look back at her incredible career navigating the tech and cultural shifts inside one of Hollywood's most powerful empires. Though she announced her retirement, it was quickly delayed to take an interim lead position at the George Lucas Educational Foundation's Lucas Learning, focusing on project-based simulations for middle school—a return to a career passion she started in the early 90s.Vicki shares the core, "rebel alliance" strategy that made ILMxLab a success—sustained innovation, industry acknowledgment, and financial self-sufficiency—and tells the terrifying story of pushing the Quest 1 headset to its absolute limits for the launch of Vader Immortal. She discusses the crucial lessons learned from pivoting the development to center the player in the story, transforming the experience from a "spatial film" to a personal journey, and the importance of slowing the pacing down for a new art form like VR.Before the interview, the hosts dissect a week of massive raises in AI (World Labs' $1B, Recursive Intelligence's $335M), the strategic shifts of tech giants like Palantir to Miami, and the intensifying race in wearables with Apple, Meta, and OpenAI all developing new devices like pendants and glasses.Key Moments00:03:17 – World Labs & Unity AI: Discussing the $1B World Labs raise for 3D world generation and Unity's plans to build AI into its game engine to make it accessible to non-developers.00:06:11 – The Miami Tech Hub: Rony Abovitz on why founders like Zuckerberg, Bezos, Larry, and Sergei are moving to Miami—it's more than just taxes, it's about a new “America strategy.”00:12:30 – Apple Watch as Wearables Base: Ted Schilowitz argues Apple already has the micro-technology (from the Apple Watch) to dominate the wearables space, but the underperformance of Siri held them back.00:27:00 – LaserDisc Learning: Vicki's early career in Lucasfilm Learning using cutting-edge but bulky computer-driven laser disc players for educational multimedia.00:28:57 – VR is 'Outsized': Ted's thesis that immersive technology has historically been overfunded and over-expected to return a profit, contrasting with the "rebel alliance" approach.00:34:45 – The Quest 1 Launch Scare: The terrifying moment before the Vader Immortal launch when a tiny software update broke the app because ILMxLab had pushed the Quest hardware to its absolute maximum.00:42:11 – The Void & Full VR Power: Charlie, Ted, and Vicki discuss why location-based VR like Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire (The Void) represents the exotic, "Ferrari version" of VR that most commercial users never experience.This conversation is a masterclass in pioneering entertainment technology. Vicki Dobbs Beck's experience shows that the path to a sustainable, breakthrough product like Vader Immortal requires a clear, rebel-alliance-style strategy, a willingness to pivot on core design principles (spatial film vs. player-centric experience), and a deep understanding of the hardware's limits—or lack thereof. It highlights the essential tension between commercial scale and the pursuit of the 'ultimate' immersive experience.Catch the AI XR Podcast where you get podcasts and watch full video episodes on YouTube. https://youtu.be/vguuHDmaSbsThis episode of The AI XR Podcast is brought to you by Zappar, the folks behind Mattercraft. Mattercraft is the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile, headsets, and desktop, and now features an AI assistant to help you design, code, and debug in real time right in your browser. Start building smarter at mattercraft.io. Listen and subscribe to The AI XR Podcast wherever you get your shows.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Enterprise XR hasn't disappeared, it has quietly moved into places where it saves time, reduces errors and changes how people work every day. On this episode of the AI XR Podcast, Charlie Fink and Rony Abovitz talk with Boston Consulting Group partner Kristi Woolsey, who leads BCG's immersive practice, about how XR plus AI is already being used for training, maintenance, onboarding, retail and architecture inside some of the world's most conservative organizations.Kristi shares a Swiss Rail project where field technicians wear lightweight AR glasses that recognize who they are and which train car they are standing in front of, pull the correct procedures from internal systems and use AI to turn thick manuals into simple task checklists.She explains how this leads to double-digit efficiency gains for both experienced and new workers, and how a small behavior design choice – automatic logging for headset users versus manual end-of-shift paperwork for everyone else – helped overcome skepticism on the front line. Drawing on her background as a physical-space architect, she also describes how VR and rapidly improving 3D tools are changing the way companies design stores, offices and buildings before anything physical is built.AI XR News you should know, Charlie and Rony cover Anthropic's massive new funding round and ethics turbulence, Chinese generative video tools like Seed Dance 2 and Kling that put TV-quality visuals in reach of “garage Spielbergs,” and Meta's reported seven million Ray-Ban and Oakley AI smart glasses sold – early signals of where wearable AI and XR are really headed.Key Moments01:03 – Anthropic's huge raise and what the ethics departure might signal05:08 – Seed Dance 2 and Kling showcase a new level of generative video08:35 – Meta's seven million smart glasses and the reality behind that number12:10 – Why wearable AI may be the real “last mile” of turning us into cyborgs15:28 – Inside the early metaverse tours Kristi and Rony built for enterprises20:27 – How BCG's VR onboarding keeps new hires engaged months before day one23:30 – Swiss Rail's AR and AI maintenance assistant and what it actually does on site27:05 – Designing XR systems that give value to both the business and frontline workers30:29 – Using VR as a lab for retail and workplace behavioral strategy33:06 – How AI-generated 3D models point toward “build every space digitally first”This episode shows how “metaverse” ideas have turned into practical tools: XR plus AI is cutting training times, improving maintenance quality and letting companies experiment with spaces before they exist. Kristi's examples make it clear that the real action is in careful workflow design, not flashy avatars.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile, headsets and desktop. https://mattercraft.io/Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web and now includes an AI assistant that helps you design, code and debug in real time, right in your browser. To explore what's possible with AI-powered XR on the web, start building smarter with Mattercraft from Zappar.Listen to “Enterprise XR Meets AI: How Smart Glasses, Digital Twins and Holodecks Are Quietly Changing Work – Kristi Woolsey” on the AI XR Podcast and follow the show for new episodes every week.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our guest this week, Alvin Wang Graylin spent 35 years in senior leadership roles across HTC, IBM, and other major tech companies. He ran HTC's VR division, came out of the famous HIT Lab, now teaches at MIT, holds a fellowship at Stanford, and just published a paper called "Beyond Rivalry" proposing a seven-point plan for deescalating US-China AI tensions and building a global safety net before the economy breaks. His thesis: America is the fastest in the AI race and the least prepared for what it's creating—a cliff where human labor theory of value collapses, capital concentration accelerates, and 40% of the population living month to month faces chaos.The conversation becomes a wide-ranging debate between Alvin, Charlie, and Rony about whether AGI will be benevolent by default (Alvin's position: research shows smarter AI seeks global coherence and becomes less controllable by individual humans, which may actually make it safer) or whether benevolence must be designed in from scratchAI XR News You Should Know: Elon Musk merges SpaceX, xAI, and X into a single entity—Alvin dismantles the space data center concept with physics (vacuum cooling is a myth, micro-meteorite collisions would destroy hardware daily, and energy is only 10% of data center costs). Amazon invests $50 billion in OpenAI that round-trips back to AWS. Alphabet breaks revenue records at $400 billion but spooks investors by disclosing $90 billion in AI spending. ElevenLabs raises $500 million at $11 billion valuation. Rony's SynthBee hits unicorn status with $100 million raised at a multi-billion dollar valuation. Alvin warns the AI bubble dwarfs the dot-com era (298 companies raised $24 billion total during dot-com; OpenAI alone is raising that in a single private round) and predicts OpenAI may implode before going public.Key Moments Timestamps:[00:04:47] SpaceX/xAI/X merger: Rony calls it Elon's "return to Tony Stark form"[00:06:41] Alvin dismantles space data centers with physics: vacuum cooling myth, micro-meteorites, $7K/kg launch costs[00:10:04] Amazon's $50B investment in OpenAI as a round-trip to AWS; the scam economy[00:11:26] Alvin predicts OpenAI may implode before going public[00:14:23] Alvin on 35 years in AI: the technology is transformational but everyone's making a commodity product[00:17:04] The AI bubble dwarfs dot-com: $24B total vs. single private rounds today[00:19:04] Rony's contrarian: the $110 trillion global economy is what's being bet against[00:21:06] Labor theory of value collapses: what happens when humans exit the production cycle[00:23:00] America is fastest in the AI race and least prepared; 40% live month to month[00:24:00] Alvin's Stanford paper "Beyond Rivalry": a CERN for AI and global data pool[00:28:00] Davos reflections: the rest of the world is more rational than America[00:34:00] Chinese vs. American culture: reverence for teachers, respect for elders[00:42:00] Alvin's "Abundant" framework: valuing human dignity over production after AGI[00:44:22] The great debate: will AGI find benevolence naturally (Alvin) or must it be designed in (Rony)?[00:47:00] Rony on risk: AGI systems are unverifiable, untestable, and we cannot take the chanceListen to the full episode and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, XR, and the future of humanity.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Edward Saatchi has been building at the frontier of AI storytelling for a decade—from Oculus Story Studios to Fable (where his AI character Lucy made her own films at Sundance) to his current venture, Amazon-backed Showrunner. His thesis is provocative: AI-generated content is stuck in a four-year rut of short-form experiments with no commercial marketplace, no monetization path, and no artistic value. Creators are working solo, making 10-second clips that can't compete with Rick and Morty or Netflix originals. The solution? Band together, make features and TV shows, and build platforms where creators get paid every time someone remixes their work.Edward's most audacious project proves the point: reconstructing Orson Welles' lost masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons (44 minutes destroyed by studio cuts in 1942), using motion-capture actors and AI to seamlessly restore what was erased. The irony is intentional—it's a film about technology destroying beauty, restored by technology. Edward's approach isn't text-to-video slop. It's human performance driving AI synthesis: hire stage actors, capture their performances, use the original cutting continuity as a blueprint, and let AI fill the gaps. The result is cinema-quality work that would cost $100 million traditionally but costs $10 million with AI assistance.In AI XR News This Week: Amazon announces 16,000 layoffs (mostly middle management) while ramping robotics—replacing humans with machines in warehouses. Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores close after years of investment; the self-checkout convenience experiment dies. Snap spins off Spectacles AR glasses into a separate business, signaling lack of cash or confidence. Apple and OpenAI both developing AI wearables to launch in 2027, powered by Gemini and Google AI. Google launches Project Genie, a generative AI model that creates fully interactive 3D game worlds you can navigate and remix in real time. Walkabout Mini Golf (one of the 10 most popular Quest apps) lays off half its staff. Atlas V, the acclaimed French VR studio behind Spheres and Battle Scar, pivots to location-based entertainment. Darren Aronofsky launches an AI animated series on YouTube called On This Day.Key Moments Timestamps:[00:05:00] Amazon's 16,000 layoffs paired with robotics expansion; the canary in the coal mine for white-collar work[00:06:00] Amazon Go/Fresh failure: humans reject automated futures when given the choice[00:07:14] Snap spinning off Spectacles; Ted's thesis on AR glasses remaining "exotic," not mainstream[00:10:00] Apple wearables running Gemini + Google AI; the winning formula for wearable AI domination[00:12:48] Walkabout Mini Golf layoffs and Atlas V's pivot; VR right-sizing continues[00:15:25] Google Genie: generative 3D worlds, playable and remixable in real time; Epic should be scared[00:19:11] Edward Saatchi joins: the state of AI video and why there's no marketplace after 4 years[00:22:00] Edward's concern: AI content is "derivative but worse" with no commercial value[00:28:00] The marketplace problem: no buyers, no revenue, no sustainability for creators[00:34:00] Ted's thesis: AI is quietly disrupting VFX and screenwriting behind the scenes[00:44:00] Critters: the proof-of-concept for AI-assisted theatrical animation ($10M vs. $100M traditionally)[00:49:00] Showrunner's business model: creators earn money every time someone remixes their show[00:52:00] The Magnificent Ambersons project: restoring Orson Welles' lost masterpiece with AIEdward makes a case that reads like a manifesto: AI's killer app isn't making derivative work faster or cheaper. It's remix, interactivity, and personalization at scale—letting audiences co-create with AI while creators get paid. His challenge to the industry: hold yourself to "derivative but better" (can you make a better Simpsons episode than the last 15 seasons?) or "original and good" (something from a non-human intelligence's perspective). Until creators band together to make features and TV shows with commercial value, AI video will remain stuck in the trough of disillusionment.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.Listen to the full episode and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, entertainment, and the future of interactive media. Watch on YouTube.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What happens when you can transform yourself into any character, in any world, in real time, while streaming live? Dean Leitersdorf is the CEO and co-founder of Decart, an Israeli AI company that just cracked the code on real-time generative video. Within a week of launching at TwitchCon, Twitch streamers were making thousands of dollars per hour letting their audiences morph them into cartoon characters, fantasy worlds, and entirely new realities—live, on stream, for three dollars per hour of AI processing.Dean's insight: the next wave of AI doesn't just make video generation faster or cheaper. It makes it interactive. Creators can now edit themselves, their backgrounds, and entire environments on the fly during Zoom calls, live streams, or gaming sessions. Decart runs this at roughly 100x cheaper than competitors and is targeting another 100x cost reduction over the next year to reach YouTube-level pricing (cents per hour instead of dollars). That shift unlocks new markets—gaming mods, consumer filters, XR glasses, and eventually robotics training in photorealistic simulated worlds.News: Humans&, a 3-month-old AI lab founded by researchers from Anthropic, Google, and X AI, raises $480 million at a $4 billion valuation based almost entirely on founder pedigree. Xreal sues Viture for patent infringement in bird bath optics, echoing the very lawsuit Magic Leap filed against Xreal years ago—a cycle of irony layered with allegations of trade secret theft and China-based IP evasion. OpenAI discloses $20 billion in revenue but rumored $50–60 billion in annual operating expenses, raising questions about path to profitability. TikTok's US operations close under Oracle's stewardship, and a new vertical drama app called Pinedrama launches. ElevenLabs launches music generation, competing with Suno and Udio.Key Moments Timestamps:[00:20:30] Dean's background: Israeli tech ecosystem, the Technion, and building a team of 0.001 percenters[00:22:00] The real-time video demo: transforming Dean into a cartoon character, live, during the podcast[00:26:30] Decart's competitive advantage: 100x cheaper than competitors, targeting another 100x reduction[00:28:00] TwitchCon success: streamers making $2,000/hour letting audiences control real-time transformations[00:31:00] Exit strategy or go-it-alone: why Decart believes foundational model owners capture the market[00:40:00] XR and robotics use cases: world reshaping, robot training simulations, AR glasses at 6K/120fps[00:48:30] Culture and talent: renting 34 apartments next to the office so engineers live two minutes away[00:55:00] The secret sauce: synthetic data from game engines beats internet-scale scrapingDean explains why Snap Camera's 10-year-old integration into stadium kiss cams proves the market is ready for the next evolution, how world models will power the next generation of XR glasses, and why the bottleneck shifts from rendering to semantics—making sure a virtual car doesn't block a real-world foot. Decart is building the foundation. The ecosystem will sprout on top.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.Listen to the full episode and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, XR, and the future of human-computer interaction.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dean Takahashi is the dean of tech writers and a 25-year veteran correspondent covering consumer electronics, gaming, and emerging technology for GamesBeat. He's covered every major tech transition—from mobile's rise to VR's boom-and-bust cycles to the current AI explosion—with a skeptical eye and a talent for finding the human story beneath the hype. This is his fifth appearance on the AI XR Podcast.For CES 2026, Dean walked the floors across the Convention Center, the Venetian Expo Center (Eureka Park), Pepcom, and Showstoppers, emerging with a clear reading: China has decisively shifted from periphery to center stage in consumer electronics manufacturing, American incumbents are pulling back and rethinking their booth strategy, and the economics of CES itself are in transition. Robotics companies are moving from prototype to commercial faster than expected—but they still can't answer basic questions about pricing and labor displacement.News: Sony cuts its booth to demo an electric car instead of TVs. Samsung skips the show floor entirely for the first time. Nvidia takes over the Fontainebleau to showcase its role in robotics enablement. Lenovo dominates the Sphere with a Gwen Stefani concert. Chinese robotics companies proliferate with laundry folders, latte makers, and toilet-cleaning units. Roomba files for bankruptcy; Chinese competitors take over the robotic vacuum market.Key Moments:[00:01:23] Dean receives his virtual green jacket as a five-time returning guest and Charlie thanks him for his insights[00:03:00] China takeover at CES: TCL dominates Central Hall, ROED owns the XR booth, robotics companies fill the floor[00:06:00] Nvidia's Fontainebleau takeover and the "chest-pumping" show of force; why scale messaging still matters[00:14:18] The robotics explosion explained: Nvidia's digital twins, Cosmos world models, and synthetic testing accelerate time-to-market[00:19:00] The pricing problem: robotics companies won't answer how much their products cost; the minimum wage rental model doesn't translate globallyWhen American companies built the show, CES reflected American manufacturing dominance. Now that China manufactures most consumer electronics, CES reflects that shift—and the implications ripple through labor, supply chains, and where the next epicenter of innovation will be. Dean, Charlie, and Ted grapple with what CES 2026 signals about global manufacturing advantage and why the geography of tech matters more than we think.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.Listen to the full post-CES debrief and subscribe for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, XR, and consumer technology.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Gary Shapiro has spent decades at the center of the global consumer technology industry, leading the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and building CES into one of the most important stages for innovation, policy, and deal-making on the planet. In this first episode of 2026, Gary joins Charlie, Rony, and Ted to preview CES, unpack the explosion of AI across every category, and deliver unusually blunt takes on tariffs, China, manufacturing, and U.S. innovation policy. He explains how CES has evolved from a TV-and-gadgets show into a global platform where boards meet, standards are set, and policymakers, chip designers, robotics firms, and health-tech startups all collide.In the News: Before Gary joins, the hosts break down Nvidia's $20 billion “not-a-deal” with Singapore's Groq, the stake in Intel, and what that combo might signal about the edge of the GPU bubble and the shift toward inference compute, x86, and U.S. industrial policy. They also dig into Netflix's acquisition of Ready Player Me and what it suggests about a Netflix metaverse and location-based entertainment strategy, plus Starlink's rapid growth and an onslaught of “AI everything” products ahead of CES.Gary walks through new features at this year's show: CES Foundry at the Fontainebleau for AI and quantum, expanded tracks on manufacturing, wearables, women's health, and accessibility, plus an AI-powered show app already fielding thousands of questions (top query: where to pick up badges). He also talks candidly about his biggest concern—that fragmented state-level AI regulation (1,200+ state bills in 2025) will crush startups while big players shrug—and why he believes federal standards via NIST are the only realistic path. The discussion ranges from AI-driven healthcare and precision agriculture to robotics, demographics, labor culture, global supply chains, and what CES might look like in 2056.5 Key Takeaways from Gary:AI is now the spine of CES. CES 2026 centers on AI as infrastructure: CES Foundry at the Fontainebleau for AI + quantum, AI training tracks for strategy, implementation, agentic AI, and AI-driven marketing, and an AI-powered app helping attendees navigate the show.Fragmented state AI laws are an existential risk for startups. Over 1,200 state AI bills in 2025—including proposals to criminalize agentic AI counseling—could create a compliance maze only large incumbents can survive, which is why Gary argues for federal standards via NIST.Wearables are becoming systems, not gadgets. Oura rings, wrist devices, body sensors, and subdermal glucose monitors are starting to be designed as interoperable families of devices, with partnerships emerging to combine data into unified health services.Robotics is breaking out of the industrial niche. CES will showcase the largest robotics presence yet, moving beyond factory arms and drones to humanoids, logistics, social companions, and applied AI systems across sectors.Tariffs, alliances, and AI will reshape manufacturing. Gary is skeptical of “Fortress USA” strategies that try to onshore everything, pointing instead to allied reshoring (Latin America, Europe, Japan, South Korea) and the long-term role of AI-powered robotics in changing labor economics and global supply chains.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Whether you're a developer, designer, or just getting started, start building smarter at mattercraft.io.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Shelly Palmer has spent 45 years watching technology reshape every industry—from writing news themes for CBS to consulting with every major media company on AI strategy. On this year-end recap, he cuts through the noise with one devastating observation: 2025 was the year everyone talked about AI while almost nobody actually used it. Executives shook their heads knowingly in meetings, pontificated about capabilities the models don't yet have, and parroted nonsense they read from other people who knew nothing. But when you asked one innocent question, they crumbled.In the News: CES 2026 shapes up with Nvidia sponsoring two full days of AI training. Samsung is skipping the main floor for a massive offsite activation. Sony brings no electronics—only Honda's experimental vehicles. The TCL and Chinese companies' presence hinges on tariff policy. The innovation series breakfast that Shelly runs is becoming an official CES event after a decade of independence.The conversation spirals into deeper territory: $3 trillion in government money is stacked behind AI development. The U.S. explicitly states it must beat China to AGI—making this the Manhattan Project of our lifetime. Shelly walks through what he's seen in successful companies (leadership using the tech, paid "Tech Tuesdays" for AI experiments, cross-discipline teams with SecOps and legal at the table) versus the chaos of places with no process. He breaks down what's real—drone warfare, cybersecurity applications, robotics—versus what's hot air. And he makes a case that won't be killed by AI itself, but by militarized applications and the geopolitical arms race we're already in.5 Key Takeaways from Shelly:Leadership belief and hands-on use are non-negotiable. Companies winning with AI have senior leaders who actually use the technology. When the CEO walks into an LT meeting saying "I built this agent over the weekend," everyone else starts experimenting too.The recipe for AI success has three ingredients: leadership belief, paid time to experiment (Tech Tuesdays/Thursdays with real budgets), and cross-discipline teams (SecOps, legal, compliance, risk) paving the way. Chaos erupts without this structure.You cannot build a point of view on AI from reading blogs or watching YouTubers. Pick a personal project you care about, go hands-on with a model (Claude, Gemini, GPT), and complete it from beginning to end. Only lived experience grounds your understanding.AI parallelizes with web 1.0: In 1998, you had to hand-code HTML, build databases manually, write raw JavaScript. Today you can vibe code a site in 90 seconds. AI will eventually reach "spin me up an expert that does X" without asking questions—we're not there yet, but it's inevitable.It's both bubble and Manhattan Project. Some valuations are insane and will burst. But military applications, cyber warfare, drone control, robotics—those aren't going anywhere. The government won't back off. Both outcomes happen simultaneously.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines game engine power with web flexibility and features an AI assistant to help you design, code, and debug in real time in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Caitlin Krause, author of Digital Wellbeing, argues that intentional design unlocks genuine connection within virtual spaces. Drawing on her teaching at Stanford and the University of Oregon, she's explored how XR environments can foster asynchronous connection and ambient awareness for people who crave belonging without hyper-social performance. Her framework rejects the "digital detox" model entirely—instead advocating for dignity-first design where users match attention with authentic intention.The hosts debate the deeper question: what happens to human purpose when AI handles all labor? Rony Abovitz frames this as the "asymmetry of design"—it's easy to build addictive tech, hard to build wellbeing tech. Caitlin counters that we may return to the original meaning of "amateur" (from amor, "to love"), where humans find meaning through play, creativity, and what Harvard's lifespan study confirms: quality of relationship and presence. The conversation spirals from platform ethics to post-work society to what first principles we should use when designing XR.5 Key Takeaways from Caitlin:Loneliness is a biological prompt to find another human—not a void to fill with endless content. XR can foster genuine forms of connection without requiring hyper-social performance.Dignity-first design unlocks freedom, invention, and agency. When digital spaces prioritize user agency over engagement metrics, people report feeling like they "got their life back."Science will soon prove what we already know about fractal patterns in nature and digital signals. The key is designing digital experiences that resonate with how humans biologically thrive.The "middle path" between nature and digital is both/and. Gamers building entire lives in virtual worlds can be healthy when those worlds offer creativity, belonging, and meaningful challenge.The post-labor economy needs a reset in literacy and values. When AI outperforms human workers, purpose shifts from survival to what makes you feel alive—maker culture, digital fab labs, hands-on creation, and "amateur" pursuits driven by love.In the News: Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi's MGX close the $50 billion TikTok spin-off deal. Meta cuts Reality Labs by 30%, but CTO Andrew Bosworth says it's moving to AI. The TCL glasses demo 70 grams of lighter, more advanced XR hardware than Ray-Ban Meta—proving that smart spending beats mega-spend.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this special live episode recorded at SynthBee headquarters in South Florida, hosts Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, and Rony Abovitz bring listeners inside a special gathering of neuroscientists, philosophers, and technologists debating the future of AI. Moving beyond hype, the conversation focuses on "Collaborative Intelligence" vs. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), exploring whether we are building tools that amplify humanity or autonomous systems that will eventually replace it.Instead of traditional interviews, the hosts invite workshop speakers to the hot seat for rapid-fire insights on the deepest questions in tech: Can we measure an AI's true intentions? Is consciousness a physics problem? And how do we ensure these systems remain compatible with human flourishing?News HighlightsDisney invests $1B in OpenAI & licenses IP: The hosts debate whether this is a masterstroke to engage fans with user-generated Sora content or a "Yahoo powered by Google" mistake that hands the keys to the kingdom to a rival.Valve launches new PCVR hardware: A quick look at the attempt to revive the high-end PC VR market.Meta adds real-time vision to Ray-Bans: The next step in multimodal AI wearables.Guest HighlightsDr. Uri Maoz (Neuroscientist, Chapman/Caltech): Discusses the "black box" problem of neural networks, comparing the opacity of AI to the human brain, and how neuroscience tools might help us detect deception in AI systems.Dr. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Ethics Professor, Duke): Argues that ethical AI regulation shouldn't be a monolith; different cultures need "sovereignty of ethics" to allow diverse moral frameworks to coexist rather than one centralized Silicon Valley standard.Dr. Julio Frenk (Chancellor, UCLA): Frames the AI race as a battle between "Computational Democracy" (distributed, transparent power) and "Computational Autocracy" (centralized control), warning that universities must preserve critical thinking or risk losing the ability to govern AI at all.Reed Maxwell & Laura Condon (Hydrologists, Princeton/Arizona): Reveal how AI is modeling the planet's water crisis, predicting "black swan" climate events, and why funding for this critical earth-science work is mysteriously disappearing.Danny M (12-Year-Old Prodigy): Steals the show with a stunningly articulate take on AI consciousness, "trapped man" experiments, and how fractal geometry might map neural weights—proving the next generation is more ready for this future than we are.Dr. Aaron Schurger (Psychology, Chapman): Explores the neuroscience of spontaneous action and free will, debating whether "telepathic" connections and quantum effects in the brain could be the missing link for true human-AI compatibility.Jared Ficklin (Chief Product Officer, SynthBee): The former Frog Design fellow argues we must shift the conversation from AI "capability" to "compatibility," using the intuitive connection humans have with dogs or horses as the benchmark for successful AI interfaces.Thanks to our sponsor Zappar!Subscribe for weekly insider perspectives from veterans who aren't afraid to challenge Big Tech. New episodes every Tuesday. Watch full episodes on YouTube. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Vince Kadlubek, co-founder of Meow Wolf, joins Charlie and Ted for a deep dive into the future of immersive entertainment, arguing that in an age of infinite AI-generated digital content, "physical reality is the only place novelty still exists." From Meow Wolf's origins as a scrappy art collective dumpster-diving for materials in Santa Fe to becoming a global location-based entertainment juggernaut with new sites planned for Los Angeles and New York, Vince reveals the philosophy behind building "maximalist" worlds that don't just tell stories but allow audiences to inhabit them.In the news segment, Charlie and Ted discuss Netflix's $83B acquisition of Warner Bros (HBO/IP assets only), Meta cutting 30% of Reality Labs to fund AI while poaching Apple's top designer, and the looming battle for 2026 as Android XR prepares to launch.Vince breaks down Meow Wolf's evolution from static walkthrough experiences to "animated spatial storytelling" where environments and characters respond to user actions—a vision of "XR RPGs" (Extended Reality Role Playing Games) that bridge the gap between video games and theme parks. He explains why the "monoculture" of Game of Thrones is gone forever, why Netflix's acquisition power signals the end of traditional scarcity models, and why the future of storytelling isn't on a screen—it's cross-reality, persistent, and physically grounded.Guest HighlightsOrigins of the Multiverse: How a Santa Fe art collective turned a bowling alley into the "House of Eternal Return" with George R.R. Martin as landlord.The "Cross-Reality" Future: Why physical locations alone aren't enough—Meow Wolf is building a "mechanically connected transmedia universe" where your actions in the park affect your digital profile and vice versa.Hollywood 2.0: New LA location takes over a movie theater to "honor cinema" while deconstructing it into spatial storytelling.Novelty Theory: "I don't care about photorealistic AI gorillas anymore." Why digital content has zero value and physical presence is the new premium.Questing & Agency: New "XR RPG" mechanics in Dallas/Houston allow visitors to level up, solve puzzles, and impact the world—gamifying reality without headsets.News HighlightsNetflix acquires Warner Bros assets ($83B)—Streaming wars end with tech giants vacuuming up legacy IP; theaters face the "nail in the coffin."Meta cuts 30% of Reality Labs—Pivot to AI funding while hiring Apple's former design chief signals a shift from brute-force VR to refined wearables.Android XR & Samsung 2026—Google and Samsung prepare to challenge Vision Pro with a new ecosystem launch next year.Alibaba launches Quark AI Glasses—China enters the smart glasses race with multimodal AI assistants.Thanks to our sponsor Zappar!Subscribe for weekly insider perspectives from veterans who aren't afraid to challenge Big Tech. New episodes every Tuesday.Watch full episodes on YouTube. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vince Kadlubek, co-founder of Meow Wolf, joins Charlie and Ted for a deep dive into the future of immersive entertainment, arguing that in an age of infinite AI-generated digital content, "physical reality is the only place novelty still exists." From Meow Wolf's origins as a scrappy art collective dumpster-diving for materials in Santa Fe to becoming a global location-based entertainment juggernaut with new sites planned for Los Angeles and New York, Vince reveals the philosophy behind building "maximalist" worlds that don't just tell stories but allow audiences to inhabit them.In the news segment, Charlie and Ted discuss Netflix's $83B acquisition of Warner Bros (HBO/IP assets only), Meta cutting 30% of Reality Labs to fund AI while poaching Apple's top designer, and the looming battle for 2026 as Android XR prepares to launch.Vince breaks down Meow Wolf's evolution from static walkthrough experiences to "animated spatial storytelling" where environments and characters respond to user actions—a vision of "XR RPGs" (Extended Reality Role Playing Games) that bridge the gap between video games and theme parks. He explains why the "monoculture" of Game of Thrones is gone forever, why Netflix's acquisition power signals the end of traditional scarcity models, and why the future of storytelling isn't on a screen—it's cross-reality, persistent, and physically grounded.Guest HighlightsOrigins of the Multiverse: How a Santa Fe art collective turned a bowling alley into the "House of Eternal Return" with George R.R. Martin as landlord.The "Cross-Reality" Future: Why physical locations alone aren't enough—Meow Wolf is building a "mechanically connected transmedia universe" where your actions in the park affect your digital profile and vice versa.Hollywood 2.0: New LA location takes over a movie theater to "honor cinema" while deconstructing it into spatial storytelling.Novelty Theory: "I don't care about photorealistic AI gorillas anymore." Why digital content has zero value and physical presence is the new premium.Questing & Agency: New "XR RPG" mechanics in Dallas/Houston allow visitors to level up, solve puzzles, and impact the world—gamifying reality without headsets.News HighlightsNetflix acquires Warner Bros assets ($83B)—Streaming wars end with tech giants vacuuming up legacy IP; theaters face the "nail in the coffin."Meta cuts 30% of Reality Labs—Pivot to AI funding while hiring Apple's former design chief signals a shift from brute-force VR to refined wearables.Android XR & Samsung 2026—Google and Samsung prepare to challenge Vision Pro with a new ecosystem launch next year.Alibaba launches Quark AI Glasses—China enters the smart glasses race with multimodal AI assistants.Subscribe for weekly insider perspectives from veterans who aren't afraid to challenge Big Tech. New episodes every Tuesday. Watch full episodes on YouTube. Thanks to our sponsor Zappar!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

David Jiang, CEO of VITURE, joins Charlie, Ted, and Rony for a special Black Friday episode to discuss the breakout year for "display glasses" and why his company is betting on gamers, not just enterprise, to drive mass adoption. With VITURE now hitting shelves at Best Buy and flashing on billboards along Silicon Valley's Highway 101, Jiang reveals the data behind the device's surprising "stickiness"—average daily users are logging nearly three hours a day, often to play console games in bed or on the couch to avoid "social pressure" from family over occupying the main TV.The conversation dives deep into the hardware reality check: why David believes "smart glasses" (like Meta Ray-Bans) and high-fidelity "display glasses" (like VITURE/XREAL) won't merge into a single device for another decade. He breaks down the physics of weight thresholds—40g for all-day wear, 80g for session-based viewing, and 200g for full headsets—and explains why trying to force high-end compute into a Ray-Ban form factor today is a fool's errand. David also unpacks VITURE's new real-time 2D-to-3D AI conversion and why he views Android XR as the inevitable "destiny" for the open ecosystem.In the news segment, the hosts debate Casio's $600 AI hamster "Moflin" (cute but annoying), analyze why Snapchat can't monetize despite hitting 1 billion users, and discuss Disney's new autonomous robots roaming the parks.Guest HighlightsVITURE enters mainstream retail: Now available at Best Buy, marking a shift from niche tech to consumer electronics."Secretly sticky" usage data: Active users average 2 hours 50 minutes daily; top 5% users hit 10+ hours/day replacing monitors.The "At-Home Mobility" Insight: Gamers aren't just using glasses on planes—they use them to play Steam Deck/Switch in bed while partners watch TV.Real-time AI 2D-to-3D: New feature converts legacy content (YouTube, photos, retro games) into 3D on the fly.Weight Philosophy: Defines strict form-factor limits: 40g (glasses), 80g (media visor), 200g (VR headset).News HighlightsCasio's Moflin AI Pet—Charlie reviews the $600 emotional support robot; cute, but drives the dog crazy.Snapchat hits 1 Billion Users—massive reach milestone, yet the hosts debate why they still can't monetize like Meta.Disney's AI Robotics—autonomous characters like the "frozen snowman" begin roaming parks.Android XR & Samsung—Google Maps AR updates and the "Gear VR" revival signal a major ecosystem shift for 2026.Subscribe for weekly insider perspectives from veterans who aren't afraid to challenge Big Tech. New episodes every Tuesday. Watch full episodes on YouTube. Thanks to our sponsor Zappar! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kent Bye—host of the Voices of VR podcast and one of XR's most prolific journalists with over 1,680 published interviews—joins Charlie and Ted for a wide ranging conversation on the state of immersive storytelling, the ethics of AI, and why XR's future might be less about consumer headsets and more about embodied presence and human connection. Kent's decade-long commitment to documenting artists, creators, and developers at the ground level offers a counterpoint to hype-driven tech coverage, revealing the messy, vital ecosystem sustaining VR through festival circuits, location-based entertainment, and government-funded experimental projects that rarely make headlines.The conversation opens with Jeff Bezos's new AI robotics company Prometheus, Amazon's one-to-one human-robot workforce parity, and the implications of industrial AI automation. Ted shares his recent appearance on cinematographer Roger Deakins's podcast, where they discussed AI as a creative tool rather than a threat—a perspective Kent echoes when discussing artists who use AI to critique AI's "colonizing force." Kent explains his philosophy of "boots on the ground" journalism inspired by Knight Ridder's Iraq War reporting, focusing on developers and creators closest to the work rather than corporate press releases.Kent reveals why he's been lukewarm on smart glasses despite industry excitement—monocular displays give him headaches, his prescription is too strong for current hardware, and most importantly, there's no compelling narrative content yet. He contrasts this with VR's rich immersive storytelling at festivals like Venice Immersive, Sundance New Frontier, IDFA DocLab, and Tribeca, where government-funded European projects push the medium's boundaries in ways U.S. startups can't afford to explore. The discussion touches on Meta's Ray-Ban AI glasses, the impracticality of Meta's neural band input, and why Snap's developer platform remains the most interesting AR ecosystem despite limited consumer traction.Guest HighlightsPublished 1,682 VR interviews with 1,000+ unpublished; focused on artists, creators, and developers over corporate narratives.Covers 30+ hours of immersive content per festival at Venice, Sundance, IDFA DocLab—documenting ephemeral art that may never distribute widely.Started in 2014 after buying Oculus DK1; began by capturing oral history at Silicon Valley VR Conference's first gathering.Background as F-22 Raptor radar systems engineer turned documentary filmmaker—blends hardcore technical knowledge with artistic sensibility.Advocates for XR as antidote to smartphone addiction—technologies that foster embodied presence rather than infinite distraction.News HighlightsJeff Bezos launches Prometheus AI robotics company—focusing on industrial applications where enterprise adoption will drive innovation faster than consumer markets.Amazon hits one-to-one human-robot workforce parity—roughly 1 million humans, 1 million robots, with plans to shed 100K+ workers over five years.Warner Brothers settles with AI music company Udio—following Axel Springer, AP, and Fox licensing deals as New York Times litigation drags on.Enterprise AI startups raise massive rounds—Stut (collections automation, $29.5M from Andreessen), Albatross (real-time personalization, $12.5M), signaling vertical-specific AI SaaS wave.HaptX acquired by Ohio manufacturer—haptic glove company pivots to industrial training applications after years targeting consumer VR.Thanks to our sponsors Zappar and VitureNew episodes every Tuesday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.