Apple plans to span ‘uncanny valley’ with new ‘Spatial Personas’ in FaceTime for Vision Pro

With Apple Vision Pro, FaceTime calls take advantage of the room around the user, with everyone on the call reflected in life-size tiles, as well as Spatial Audio, so it sounds as if participants are speaking right from where they are positioned. Users wearing Vision Pro during a FaceTime call are reflected as a Persona — a digital representation of themselves created using Apple’s most advanced machine learning techniques — which reflects face and hand movements in real time. Users can do things together like watch a movie, browse photos, or collaborate on a presentation.

iPhone News

07-06-2023 14:10

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[I]n a future visionOS update, these avatars will become even more realistic.

In its Platforms State of the Union video for developers this week, Apple announced that it is working on “Spatial Personas” that will allow Vision Pro users to “break out of the familiar FaceTime tile and feel more present, like they are gathered in the same physical space.” Spatial Personas will have a transparent background and be able to display more movement and body language for a more lifelike experience.

Apple said a developer preview of Spatial Personas will be available later this year, but it did not indicate when the feature will be publicly released.