DeepFest 2024: How AI is solving XR’s biggest problem

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The wave of advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), soaring investments and the competition for talent have revolutionised how business gets done. The technology is expected to impact how companies grow revenue, conduct everyday operations, engage customers and employees, build new business models, and more.

AI is already accelerating the innovative technology’s trend toward greater immersion, blurring the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds while allowing users to easily create their own content.

When combined with extended reality (XR) technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR), AI opens a world of creative possibilities but raises new issues related to privacy, manipulation, and safety.

“AI will solve the biggest issue the XR space faces by democratising content creation and bringing its cost to near zero,” said Alvin Wang Graylin, China President and Global VP of Corporate Development at HTC – who will be speaking at DeepFest 2024.

“And immersive technologies will enable unlimited virtual worlds to give an outlet for the energy and renewed purpose to the billions of displaced workers that AI will create in the coming decade due to its massive gains in productivity.”

The promise of XR is fueling predictions for an array of once-unthinkable possibilities within the fast-emerging metaverse. “By 2030 people could be spending more time in the metaverse than in the real world,” KPMG said in a report while projecting that people will be applying for jobs, earning a living, meeting with friends and shopping using the virtual capabilities of the metaverse.

Welcome to extended reality (XR)

Reality as we know has undergone a historic transformation. With the launch of Apple Vision Pro and the availability of affordable options such as Meta’s Quest 3, the world is standing at the threshold of a profound technological revolution that is taking the ‘real world’ far beyond the limitations of physics and time.

Generative AI (GenAI) will play a central role in improving and scaling XR experiences, democratising 3D content creation through new tools and creating more realistic and engaging virtual environments.

US tech giant Qualcomm said voice interfaces powered by GenAI will provide a natural and intuitive way to interact with XR devices, while personal assistants and lifelike 3D avatars will become increasingly prevalent in the XR space.

XR has emerged as a transformative technology, offering businesses enhanced user engagement, improved training, and immersive data visualisation. Major use cases span across industries, from training and education to marketing and gaming.

A study by PwC revealed that the use of AR and VR for soft skills training was four times faster than in a traditional classroom setting.

Together with AI, XR will deliver physical interactions dynamically and in real-time. The innovative technology will achieve this by overlaying digital elements in the real-world environment, enabling businesses to deliver contextually pertinent just-in-time data, support, and information to people who are navigating complex experiences.

“AI-related technologies have been a major part of almost all aspects of enabling immersive computing to be possible. Motion tracking, hand tracking, voice interactions, spatial scanning, and procedural world generation would all not be possible without AI,” said Graylin.

From enhancing productivity to transforming customer experiences, XR presents an array of benefits for businesses looking to gain a competitive edge in the market. Companies can use the technology to virtually design and test new products and experiences much faster and at a fraction of the cost and to deliver immersive and personalised entertainment experiences that can’t be replicated in the real world.

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