In this series, we track the growth in AR/VR patents worldwide that we expect will accompany the rapid innovation in this technology space. We highlight trends in patenting AR/VR technologies—who is obtaining AR/VR patent protection, and where. We track the various technology centers at the United States Patent and Trademark Office that handle AR/VR applications. And, from time to time, we shine the spotlight on interesting new AR/VR patents.
Over the past few months, music stars have been scrambling to cash in on the latest craze in collectibles by selling art, merch and even albums in the form of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. But this week, the phenomenon became more confusing than ever for the music industry, when many of the top artists went on sale as pseudo-NFTs themselves.
The culprit: BitClout, a new platform that promises to allow creators and musicians to monetize their celebrity. The decentralized social network and marketplace has been quietly bubbling under the radar, with backers rumored to include big-name venture capital firms. Over recent weeks, the platform had uploaded the top 15,000 influencers from Twitter and issued coins for each, allowing early site users to buy and sell them. Prices for the coins of celebs like Billie Eilish and Elon Musk soared.
IMAX Corporation (NYSE: IMAX) and Maximus, a next-generation visual effects company founded by artificial intelligence entrepreneur Dr. Daniel Nadler, today announced a joint venture to deliver A.I.-based high-resolution video enhancement technologies across home entertainment, including solutions for streaming services and smart devices. Previously, Dr. Nadler founded Kensho Technologies, the artificial intelligence firm he sold in 2018, establishing Kensho as the world's most valuable independently owned A.I. company at the time.
The new joint venture, IMAX AI, will advance A.I.-based solutions for Ultra High Definition (UHD) 4K enhancement across smart devices, new and library content, as well as real-time enhancement of live entertainment and sports. The IMAX Enhanced home entertainment initiative will work closely with IMAX AI to accelerate its current growth across streaming platforms and high-end consumer devices around the world. Dr. Nadler will also serve as Special Advisor to the IMAX Board of Directors.
Following the sale of Kensho to S&P Global in 2018, Dr. Nadler, who received his PhD from Harvard, focused on his work as a visual artist under the pseudonym Daniel Wallace, which involves generative artificial intelligence algorithms, photography, motion capture, digital painting and digital sculpting techniques. To support this work, Dr. Nadler founded Maximus as a privately-held visual effects firm, on the model of Industrial Light & Magic. Maximus ultimately developed A.I.-based high-resolution video enhancement technologies that are broadly applicable beyond visual art, and Dr. Nadler is partnering with IMAX to commercialize those technologies in the entertainment industry.
The joint venture will be overseen by Vikram Arumilli, Senior Vice President of IMAX Corporation; Samantha Whitmore, COO & Head of Engineering of Maximus; and Zachary Ziegler, Head of A.I. of Maximus. Arumilli most recently served as Chief of Staff for IMAX. He joined the company in 2019 from McKinsey & Company and holds a B.A. and M.S. from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School. Whitmore most recently served as Head of Engineering at Kensho Technologies and holds an A.B. from Harvard University and an M.S. from the University of Cambridge. Ziegler is currently completing his PhD at Harvard University.
The military branch, started under former president Donald Trump, is working with government contractor SAIC on a gamified training platform that allows employees to interact with full-scale digital replicas of national security satellites. The platform lets the armed forces practice responding to missile warning scenarios and collaborate in cyberspace.
They’re not exactly rehearsing how to destroy alien spaceships. But if satellite solar panels need to be fixed, they can practice doing that — without having to travel to space to do it.If a spacecraft needs to be repositioned, they can execute that too. If troops need more information about a mission, it’s as simple as pressing a button. No space suits or textbooks necessary.
More directly, Space Force’s job is to maintain, protect and expand the U.S. fleet of advanced military satellites.
Wang says his goal for the startup, which he began with friends after they all graduated from Carnegie Mellon, is simple: Focus on serving its most consistent users, bring in customization elements to make virtual spaces feel homey and hire a lot of engineers.
“We’re a much broader communication platform that is going to be used across all things, but we are leaning heavily into the virtual HQ [use case],” Wang said. The 37-person team has embedded features to promote spontaneity, such as “shoulder taps” to prompt a co-worker to chat, or pool tables where employees can circle around and start a virtual game of pool. The platform also uses spatial audio technology, which is popular in video games, so that users can get the feel of running into each other. The technology basically allows you to hear someone’s voice louder when you are near them, and softer as you walk away. Wang says that it built its own video-conferencing system from scratch because other solutions didn’t work well with spatial technology.
One of the challenges of building a community platform is figuring out monetization without extracting value. This is one of the reasons that Wang, when I first talked to him in November, always wanted to avoid venture capital money (because the incentives might rush the platform into pursuing business models that weren’t user-friendly).
Months later, Wang said his mind changed when he met with Sequoia Capital’s Shaun Maguire and saw an opportunity to scale the metaverse with venture dollars.
Filmmaker Anand Gandhi, who shot to fame as writer-director of the globally-acclaimed 2012 release Ship Of Theseus, has scripted and produced the upcoming web series OK Computer. Gandhi says his new effort, about artificial intelligence (AI), explores the “legal frameworks” that have to be put in place between “organic species” and the “cloud-based intelligence system”. He says the advent of AI has changed a lot of things and the series talks about the co-existence of the two. Ok Computer Trailer: Vijay Varma, Radhika Apte’s Intriguing Sci-Fi Comedy To Hit Disney+ Hotstar On March 26.
The filmmaker added that the film is more of an “ice breaker” in terms of starting conversations with the West about the development of AI. “What I am trying to say is that we have seen our peers in the West share great ideas and insights about AI, our future, and what life and living would be like in the future.
On one side, the “connectionist” tribe believes that computers can learn behaviour in the same way as humans do, by processing a vast array of interconnected calculations. On the other, the “symbolists” argue that machines can only follow discrete rules. The machine’s instructions are contained in specific symbols, such as digits and letters.
After an initial burst of enthusiasm for connectionist thinking among AI pioneers, the symbolist tribe came to dominate as researchers realised that human and machine intelligence are very different attributes. But over the past decade the maverick connectionists have had their revenge, making many of the most striking advances in AI, such as speech and image recognition systems, conversational chatbots, semi-autonomous cars and the AlphaGo program that famously beat the world’s strongest champion in the fiendishly complex game of Go in 2016.
This intellectual counter-revolution that is now rapidly transforming the world is the subject of technology writer Cade Metz’s colourful and readable book, Genius Makers.
Genius Makers is a good read, as far as it goes, but the reader is left with the wish that Metz had displayed deeper learning.
The seventh annual Festival of International Virtual and Augmented Reality Storytelling (FIVARS) concluded its Winter session this Tuesday, March 9. The virtual reality film showcase, which was supposed to run from February 19 to March 2, was extended an extra week due to heavy attendance, according to event organizers.
The FIVARS Winter edition showcased 25 official selections.
Exploring the February Selection
The international selection included moving documentaries, edge-of-your-seat horror, spatial music videos, and more.
Director Ken Winikur’s Don’t Forget Me takes viewers inside the experiences of concentration camp survivor George Brent. A volumetric capture of Brent guides visitors through his experience illustrated through a combination of 360-video, archival photographs, and chilling animations and audio.
Welcome to the Other Side – Zero Gravity took users inside of a 3D model of Notre Dame Cathedral for a virtual concert self-directed by musician Jean-Michel Jarre. The high-energy virtual reality experience, created in collaboration with the City of Paris and UNESCO, included a crowd of virtual concert-goers to share the experience with.
festival director and founder Keram Malicki-Sanchez said in a message to event attendees. “As is par for the course with the FIVARS, you are now participating with us in this historic moment.”
We can now look forward to the Fall showcase, which will run from October 15 to November 2, and include the 2021 FIVARS Awards.
