Why are Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality the Perfect XR Pair?

Here's why companies are incorporating more AI solutions across virtual reality

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Virtual RealityNews Analysis

Published: May 29, 2023

Demond Cureton

Artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) are set to increase in popularity despite ongoing turbulent times for the Metaverse. Although the two emerging technologies differ, they work together to deepen connections between human beings and the digital world.

Virtual reality combines hardware and software to immerse users in digital environments for numerous use cases, including learning, entertainment, therapy, and others. Conversely, artificial intelligence backs the creation of technological advancements that can analyse, respond, and create based on data sources.

As tech companies continue to invest in new applications and use cases for VR and AI, the two technologies are working more closely together. Across the industry, tech firms are incorporating artificial intelligence to boost computer vision. The latter aims to sense the actions and movements of a person in a physical or virtual space. By doing so, AI significantly accelerates the processing of these complex motions and analytics.

Blending VR and AI in the New World

For example, the travel, tourism, and healthcare sectors have leveraged AI virtual assistants to guide people in virtual environments. Dubai’s Ministry of Health and Prevention (MOHAP) began including virtual and real assistants on its metaverse healthcare portal. Visitors to the immersive space can receive medical attention, advice, and documentation in real-time with the help of real staff and virtual, AI-powered chatbots.

In travel and tourism, numerous countries have also opened national metaverse portals with AI-assisted chats to communicate with users. People seeking visas, passport renewals, and updated country info can use cross-platform tools to receive key information and documents for their travels.

Across retail, VR is also providing new ways to enhance the customer experience. Shoppers can use AR try-on technologies to test clothing before visiting physical stores, significantly reducing returns. Firms such as Reactive Reality allow retail firms to avoid overproduction and meet sustainable development goals (SDGs).

This also applies to companies like IKEA and Amazon, where customers can superimpose virtual furniture, electronics, and clothing stocks in physical locations. This also allows the two companies to streamline their stocks by limiting returns and accommodating customer needs with exact measurements.

With AI included, the retail experience can also suggest other similar products to complement purchases.

Making VR More Intelligent

In addition to empowering brand-customer relationships, artificial intelligence and virtual reality can also boost collaboration and human-computer interfacing (HCI). This provides a qualitative leap in performance for virtual experiences and deepens collaboration for remote workforces.

Companies such as Morpheus have used AI to boost interaction between colleagues in immersive spaces by providing AI-backed eye contact for avatars. Additionally, Microsoft has included AI-powered avatars for people using its Teams platforms, enabling people’s real-time interactions in meetings.

Companies such as Varjo, Magic Leap, Meta, Pico, and HTC VIVE rely on AI to assist in foveated rendering. This provides extended battery life by offering high-resolution images only where subjects focus their gaze rather than across the entire experience.

Other firms can use AI to record impressive insights on human behaviour via attention tracking. CORETXR, Tobii, Varjo, and potentially ARuVR can leverage these cutting-edge solutions with artificial intelligence to analyse how humans interact with creative content with real-time precision.

Furthermore, with the explosion of generative AI tools, many XR companies are starting to include them in their platforms. NVIDIA has included generative AI on its Omniverse platform to enable on-the-fly creative content.

Conclusion

Concluding, companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta, and many others have integrated ChatGPT 3.5 into their services and platforms. This has led to on-the-fly creation of backgrounds, environments, search queries, and other useful tools. These have become instrumental for world-building, training, and other use cases.

Other firms such as ARuVR, Moth and Flame, and Talespin are also using GenAI to create training modules rapidly, eliminating the need for creative design studios. This also provides training solutions that can move more easily across curricula. Doing so allows instructors to create agile, adaptive courses for learners with key analytics.

While artificial intelligence and virtual reality are incredible as separate technologies, their combined usage allows both to shine even brighter. Future adoptions of the two emerging technologies will prove even more impressive.

 

 

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Brands mentioned in this article.

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