The complexities of human relationships often make life unpredictable and difficult at times. What if we could construct a hologram companion based on our preferences and powered by artificial intelligence (AI)? One that can generate real-time responses in your interactions?
AI Holographic technology has risen to new heights recently, with the Hypervsn SmartV Digital Avatar being released at the start of the year. The AI hologram functions on the SmartV Window Display, a gesture-based 3D display and merchandising system, allowing real-time customer interaction.
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) has also developed its first home-grown real-time holo professor, which can project a speech given by a lecturer in another place. With Malaysia breaking boundaries with extended reality (XR) technology, can the next wave of hologram technology be fully AI-powered without constraints?
Natural communication
The idea of interacting with holograms essentially boils down to humans interacting with computers. Interacting with computers usually involves interacting with the keyboard or mouse, but holograms take it further, making computer interaction seamless and more natural.
“Ultimately, it’s just humans interacting with computers. But in the next paradigm shift, it will be so easy that, at times, we won’t even know that they are there,” says Ivan Gerard Khoo, director of Ministry XR, a spatial computing solutions developer.
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With generative AI advancing rapidly, integrating it into holograms would provide a greater immersive experience of interacting with computers around you. Khoo says: “It’s still not easy for everyone (like the disabled or the elderly) to use the billion apps we have today. Imagine all the apps in our phone right now [becoming] accessible in the environment around us. And the evolution has begun as the enabling technologies, although nascent, are here today.”
“Many researchers are seeing that we are moving towards an artificial general intelligence that may even develop sentience,” says Andrew Yew, founder and chief technology officer of Ministry XR. As much as it is promising to develop artificial sentients, Yew notes that no machine thus far has ever convincingly passed the Turing test for determining whether AI can think like a human being.
Walking side by side with holograms
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With minimalism on the rise, the focus turns to the technology and hardware surrounding integrating AI into holograms. Is it possible to create a hologram not restricted by a display enclosure?
“In movies, you don’t need anything, and you [can] interact with the virtual world just like that. But to make it happen, you need hardware to make it work. You need to set up those things in such a way that it has all of that so that it can trick your mind [and you think it is] holographic, but actually, it is not,” explains Kapil Chhabra, founder of Silver Wings, XR Interactive Solutions.
Holograms demonstrate an illusion of light rays reflected onto a medium. They are three-dimensional images generated by interfering beams of light that reflect real, physical objects. Now, imagine AI bringing eye-tracking technology into holographic figures, allowing them to have eye contact with humans.
Olaf Kwakman, managing partner of Silver Wings XR Interactive Solutions, thinks it is a brilliant solution as users no longer need glasses. “Technology is still needed, but you can create some projection with eye-tracking. And that works beautifully. If you make these screens large and all around you, you can project them any way you like. But we’re not quite there yet,” he claims.
The challenge with projecting holograms onto mediums is the ability to project it such that it is invisible to the human eye, so that the holograms are more realistic. Chhabra says this has been a struggle for some time and hopes it can be made possible.
Taking inspiration from the Apple
VR Headset’s pocket-sized and portable battery solutions, Kwakman says it has a very promising augmented reality visualisation but adds that the hardware needs to be further evolved into something smaller. “[I believe that] you won’t wear glasses anymore in the future. Instead, you’re going to wear some kind of small lens, which you can just put in your eye [and the lens can] project augmented reality in full.”
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AI’s potential could bring realistic 3D holograms to new heights, filling the gaps and making the interactive experience more engaging and powerful. “[To realise full holographic and 3D visualisation,] you need a strong connection as well because there’s a lot of data flowing,” says Kwakman.
He adds that the lack of usage of holographic solutions is due to poor understanding and awareness of the technology’s benefits, which hampers progress. “It’s very difficult to envision the advantage it can bring to a company to introduce holographic, 3D visualisation solutions and how it will benefit them. Leaders find that troublesome as well, so it is sometimes difficult to get the budget for it.”
Roadblocks
Having created Malaysia’s first home-grown holo professor, Ajune Wanis Ismail, senior lecturer in computer graphics and computer vision at UTM’s Faculty of Computing, shares that XR hologram systems can be complex to set up and maintain. Technical issues, such as connectivity problems or software glitches, could disrupt lessons.
AI algorithms enhance the accuracy of holographic content, reducing artefacts and improving image quality. These holographic solutions in XR technology come as a challenge as the technology is relatively new and is rapidly evolving, with breakthroughs occurring since then.
“Building and deploying AI-powered holographic systems can be costly [regarding hardware and software components]. Incorporating AI into holograms could pose an immense demand for computational power. Most of the existing holograms produce non real-time content with a video editing loop, but AI models for holography are computationally intensive,” says Ajune.
She emphasises the importance of achieving high-fidelity reconstruction in handling complex dynamic scenes with objects or viewers in motion. “Researchers are developing more efficient algorithms and leveraging hardware acceleration [such as graphics processing units] to reduce computational demands,” says Ajune on how achieving real-time interaction with holographic content demands low latency.
Looking into the future
There is no doubt that XR hologram systems are complicated and a challenge to integrate with AI. However, the prospect of replicating environments and enabling real-time global communication without the need for physical presence spurs excitement. Ajune believes that as we advance into the era of digitalisation, people need to start familiarising themselves with this technology and become proficient users.
With AI and XR hologram technology becoming increasingly advanced, educating users and raising awareness about digital well-being are also pertinent. There must be sensibility and responsibility from business owners and users in utilising XR and AI technology, as society’s mindset drives the continued advancement of such technologies.
“I think [what AI can do] is going to be amazing, but at the same time, I also see the risks there. Sometimes it feels a bit scary if so much power is given out [of the] hands of humans and with computers being able to do that,” says Kwakman.
This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia. It has been edited for clarity and length.
