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Pesto spices up digital workplaces so remote work isn’t so … remote

Most employees are unlikely to return to in-person work, but are having to use tools created for that purpose. Pesto's founders think that needs to change.

TikTok is working on avatars, live audio streams, new creator tools and more

TikTok is building a number of new features, including Bitmoji-like avatars, keyword filtering for the For You Page, group chats, audio-only livestreams, screen sharing on livestreams and Twitch-like

The metaverse will be filled with ‘elves’

The most dangerous part of the metaverse will be agenda-driven artificial agents that look and act like other users but are actually simulated personas controlled by AI.

General Catalyst leads $7M investment in AR startup selling NFT jetpacks

After months of NFT mania and Facebook’s recent name change to Meta, it’s fair to say that “metaverse” chatter has reached a fever pitch. And while crypto investors are buying

Microsoft Teams gets 3D animated avatars, because metaverse

Microsoft wants a piece of the metaverse, too, so at its Ignite conference today, the company announced 3D avatars for those Teams meetings where you don’t want to be on camera. Those animated p

Roblox pushes toward avatar realism, plans to add NFT-like limited-edition items

At its annual developer conference Thursday, Roblox painted a picture of what’s next for the fast-growing online multiplayer portal that’s like catnip for kids and teens. In his keynote, Roblox co

Disney’s new ‘Genie’ line-booking service launches at Walt Disney World on October 19

Disney’s newest digital service, Disney Genie, is launching on October 19 at Walt Disney World Resort. The service, first unveiled in August, is an update to the company’s earlier line-res

Twitter invests in avatar startup Facemoji

Avatar startups have come and gone over the past few years, but the future that many of the entrepreneurs behind them originally imagined has proven more or less accurate. Apple is increasingly intere

Avatar startup Genies scores $65 million in funding round led by Mary Meeker’s Bond

Over the past several years I’ve covered my fair share of upstart avatar companies that were all chasing the same dream — building out a customizable platform for a digital persona that ga

Roblox buys digital avatar startup Loom.ai

Roblox announced today that it’s buying a digital avatar startup called Loom.ai. Purchasing a company that has focused singularly on creating more realistic human avatars is an interesting play

The coronavirus has hastened the post-human era

I believe we are seeing meaningful recalibrations of our relationship to identity, labor, health and love. In short, the post-human era is beginning in earnest.

Snow’s avatar app Zepeto registers 150M users, eyes China market

Some of you may recall the South Korean app Zepeto that went viral among Gen Z users a year and a half ago. The app, which renders selfies into animated avatars and lets people adorn their computer-ge

The portrait of an avatar as a young artist

In this episode of Flux I talk with LaTurbo Avedon, an online avatar who has been active as an artist and curator since 2008.

A guide to Virtual Beings and how they impact our world

Money from big tech companies and top VC firms is flowing into the nascent “virtual beings” space. Mixing the opportunities presented by conversational AI, generative adversarial networks, photore

Digital influencers and the dollars that follow them

Animated characters are as old as human storytelling itself, dating back thousands of years to cave drawings that depict animals in motion.

The makers of the virtual influencer, Lil Miquela, snag real money from Silicon Valley

Brud, the actual company behind one of Instagram’s most popular virtual influencers (it’s a thing), has raised millions of dollars from Silicon Valley investors because this is 2018 and ev

In the future there will be mindclones

This an exciting excerpt from the new book Thinking Machines by Like Dormehl. The book offers a detailed history of primitive machine learning and a dense and fascinating look at the future of true ar

CHKN, letting you build and raise creatures, is betaworks’ latest game

betaworks doesn’t often launch games, but when they do, it tends to stick. Just take Dots, for example, which ended up spinning out of betaworks as its own game studio. Today, the startup studio

Virtual Reality And A Parallel Universe Of Cyberclones

One of the biggest technology trends of 2015 was virtual reality (VR), from Oculus Rift to Google's cardboard headsets. TechCrunch SF Disrupt 2015 saw a lot of VR experiences where users could wear he

Tell Us Your Favorite Technology Achievement of 2015

Wowed by Internet delivered by floating balloons? Or a new way to watch TV? Or a way to charge your phone? We are searching far and wide for the best technology achievements of 2015, and we want to h
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