Gen AI Episodes

A single Cascadeur post on X triggered an uproar on social media. From excitement to hatred, the community of professionals and creatives voiced their feelings, asked legitimate questions and tried to understand how AI is reshaping the work of animators. To answer these questions, I talked with Alexander Grishanin, CTO of Cascadeur, who explains how Cascadeur defines AI versus machine learning, what is the state of the art when it comes to “procedural motion”, the ethical implications around tra...

Asim Ahmed, multi-award-winning game developer and head of product marketing at Niantic Spatial, joins the show to break down how geospatial AI is reshaping both digital experiences and real world infrastructure. As one of the early marketing leaders behind Pokémon GO and a key force behind the Peridot franchise across mobile, mixed reality and AR glasses, Asim explains how Niantic Spatial is building a large geospatial model that gives machines a true understanding of the physical world. Listen...

Cayden Pierce, CEO of Mentra, joins the show to discuss how his team is building an operating system for the next generation of personal computing through #smartglasses. Drawing on experience from MIT, building #AI agents, and earlier work with Steve Mann, he explains why all day wearability is the true barrier to mass adoption and how Mentra approaches power, latency, and ergonomics differently. Cayden breaks down the distinct roles of display glasses and camera glasses, why accessibility use c...

Viren Tellis, co-founder and CEO of Uthana, joins the show to discuss how generative AI is reshaping motion creation for games, VFX, and interactive worlds. With over 15 years of experience leading product and operations teams at AppNexus and Hedado, Viren explains how Uthana’s technology can generate animation from text, video, or even in real time, giving creators instant, controllable motion without traditional mocap setups. He breaks down how developers use Uthana’s SDKs and APIs in Unreal, ...

Manuel, a TEDx speaker, former head of XR Design at IBM Canada and Currently Emerging tech Advocate at Unity, brings 15 years of experience across industries from aerospace to gaming and now teaches at institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. In this episode, he discusses how creativity is shifting in an era where AI lowers barriers to entry, allowing more diverse voices to contribute. Manuel shares insights from his cultural preservation project Protopica, created with filmmaker Will Selvi...

Sam Cole is the CEO and a co-founder of FitXR. He is a firm believer in the benefits of regular exercise for physical and mental health, and since the conception of VR, he turned his vision of delivering immersive fitness into a reality for hundreds of thousands of people who have rediscovered that movement can be fun thanks to FitXR. In this conversation We take a deep dive into FitXR and learn how the team keeps innovating He shares the lessons he learned as a founder when rapidly g...

Mo dedicated over 18 years to designing solutions that empower people and make a meaningful impact. This includes more than 8 years in immersive XR, spatial computing, and AI-powered products, leading in-house and remote teams across pioneering startups like ShapesXR, Gravity Sketch and FitXR, forward-thinking agencies and more recently as Senior product designer at Meta. We tap into his experience when hiring designers His take on the role of designers within bigger and smaller organ...

Dmytro Kornilov is an innovation marketing futurist with 15+ years of experience in the industry. He is the founder of FFFACE.ME an award-winning innovation company, and LOOOK.AI an AR and AI Mirrors company. With practical experience in AR, MR, Digital Beauty and Fashion, AI and Phygital, Dmytro has led omnichannel innovation projects for global brands like Prada, Inditex, PUIG, Ralph Lauren, D&G, Valentino, Burberry, L'Oréal, Mugler, Meta, and many more Nathan C Bowser (they/them): is a pr...

Kent Keirsey is the founder and CEO of Invoke. He has been in the tech industry for over 14 years, serving as a product and business leader in startups across B2B, B2C, and Enterprise SaaS. In 2022, he was an early contributor to Invoke's generative AI tools in open-source, building solutions for professional creatives. Recognising the need for these tools to serve teams, he founded Invoke in 2023 to provide image-generation software for established creative teams and enterprises. During this co...

Yuqian Sun is a Chinese AI narrative researcher based in London and currently a doctoral student at the Royal College of Art. Leveraging her expertise in interactive media, she creates narrative experiences that feel alive and extend beyond video games and into our daily lives through conversational AI agents. She explores this topic through chatbots, games and interactive installations, which expand the boundary of fiction through human or non-human language interactions. In this conversa...

Olli Huttunen is an entrepreneur, video editor, 3D specialist, software developer and a real authority when it comes to Gaussian Splatting. I got to know Olli thanks to his Youtube channel, a priceless resource for anybody who wants to dive into this new 3D paradigm and today we take a deep dive into the world of Gaussian splatting: Olli explains why PostShot is his favorite tool and how to make the most out of it He shares best practices to minimize file sizes He tells us abou...

Ernest Spicer is a data scientist, game developer, and technology executive developing new immersive learning and gaming experiences in AR powered by AI, and I don’t say that lightly because Ernest and his team were the first to deploy AI on the new Snap Spectacles. In this conversation, we will dive into His experience when developing for various smart glasses How as a special Olympic coach he sees AR helping neurodivergent athletes We talk about the future of wearable AI ...

Jack Wang is the CEO of Kiri engine a powerful 3D scanning app for Android, iOS (and web browsers!). I have experienced Kiri myself and trust me, there some key features that makes it different from anything else on the market. Today we will dive into the world of Gaussian splatting with Jack discussing: - Some of the current limitations of Gaussian splitting - The benefits of Gaussian Splatting compared to photogrammetry and the verticals benefitting from it - Some of the unique featur...

Yacine Aciakh spent over six years as a Senior AI Product Manager at Criteo, one of France's first unicorns, where he grew multiple products to $100M in annual revenue. In 2019, he co-founded Wisear with one clear goal: connecting humans and computers like never before. In this conversation: We start by looking into the foundation of neural interfaces What were some of the challenges when building neural interfaces that fit in your earbuds He showed me how he could select sw...

Olivier Plante has over 12 years of experience as an innovator, team lead, founder, and is now the CEO of Fleksy: a white-label keyboard powering the best typing experiences in the world. I jumped into this conversation curious and unsure of what to expect, but Olivier opened a world to me and made me realize how important and reach a challenge like typing is in 2D, in 3D in the era of AI. We discussed: Why voice will never fully replace typing How the typing experience is evolving th...

Subscribe to XR AI Spotlight weekly newsletter 👉 https://xraispotlight.substack.com/ Gordon is the co-founder of Anything World, a startup that wants to make everyone a 3D content creator using AI! One of the things that makes them different from many other startups trying desperately to crack the code is their focus on animations and the fact their technology is available for basically everything: blender, maya, Unreal, roblox and even Discord. But is AI good enough to support professional w...

Charlie Fink is a Producer, Podcaster, Author, Professor, and Forbes columnist, covering AI, XR, and the Metaverse. In this interview, we discuss: The current state of XR How AR might not be the perfect match for AI as we all might think Some of the similarities and differences between the rise of the internet and the rise of AI The impact AI is having on teachers and students How AI will take people’s jobs… even his own Subscribe to XR AI Spotlight weekly ...

David Marak has been active in XR since the early days of Google Cardboard and the first prototypes of augmented reality. Six years ago, he co-founded the immersive studio Yord, which has since expanded worldwide and is now recognized as one of the top Immersive App development companies globally. During this journey, Yord survived and thrived through a lot of ups and downs and he is now facing a new challenge and opportunity: the intersection between XR and AI. Today we will look at Yord cl...

Max Tiel is one of the co-founder of Thunderboom Records, a dutch studio committed to empowering musicians, professionals and organizations in the music industry that like many others creative fields has been shaken up by Gen AI. Max is on the ground and works actively to create, test and share how technologies such as artificial intelligence, AR and virtual avatars can empower emerging artists. They have developed a comprehensive open source toolkit to help musicians understand and implement th...

Andreas Edesberg is the co-founder and CEO of Sloyd. With over 300,000 users globally, Sloyd is on a mission to make 3D asset creation accessible, quick, and easy. But are they living up to the expectations and needs of studio and 3D artists? What about a future where worlds are create in Real time? Today we will dive deep into this topic and discuss: How Sloyd is giving more control on the style generated 3D models The main use cases for 3D assets generated with Sloyd Th...

Oskar Stålberg is an established indie Game Developer, and a real authority when it comes to procedural content generation. He has worked on Tom Clancy's The Division and later focused on his own titles like Bad North and Townscaper, both acclaimed successes by the gaming community. Oskar has also ported Townscaper to Meta Quest and keeps finding new and creative ways to leverage procedural generation for innovative and unconventional game ideas. Join this episode to learn: -How he found t...

Sachin is an artist and creative tech entrepreneur. As the co-founder of AI Lemon Academy he has trained hundreds of professionals including teams at Amazon, to use AI in their daily creative workflow. From initial concepting to refined prompting to generate specific visuals he runs bootcamps for leaders & professionals in the creative industry and he is a relentless explorer of the latest and greatest tools and workflows. We will dive deep into the world of AI-generated images and will cover...

Alex Karim is a technology leader focusing on the convergence of the physical and digital world. As a Mixed Reality pioneer, Alex was the first person to deploy HoloLens 2 in Formula 1 at McLaren. In 2021 Alex joined Microsoft and in his current role he consults some of the world’s largest organizations supporting their AI transformations and today we will learn from him: What are the biggest barriers to the adoption of XR and AI in big organizations How to capture the value from earl...

Bobak Tavangar is the Co-founder of Brilliant Labs, A Singapore-based startup that launched to market Frame: lightweight AR glasses powered by AI. In a space of AI-enabled wearables that is getting ever more crowded, there is one thing that sets Frame apart: it is completely Open source. By listening to this episode you will learn: What is Frame, Noah and what are some of the interesting applications the developer community is building on top of this open hardware and software platform ...