Welcome back to our weekly roundup of happenings from XR and AI realms. Let’s dive in…
The Lede
The Super Bowl of XR, Augmented World Expo, kicks off Monday in Long Beach. Evan Spiegel of Snap is keynoting. More news on the consumer release of the new see-though AR Snap Specs are expected. Xreal will be demoing its long-anticipated Aura Google XR glasses. A wide range of AI glasses are expected on the show floor. Spatial AI is the key theme this year, as the show will demonstrate how the XR Industry is integrating AI and creating new use cases for enterprises and consumers. Enterprise use still comprises 75% of the market.
Feeling Spatial
XR analyst Tony “SkarredGhost” Vitillo got hands-on time with smart glasses from Huawei, Rokid, TCL RayNeo, and other Chinese manufacturers during a recent trip to China. Vitillo praised Huawei’s AI glasses for photography, video stabilization, battery life, and audio quality. He highlighted Rokid’s eyewear design, software ecosystem, and developer support, while calling TCL’s RayNeo glasses among the brightest display glasses he has ever used. Vitillo’s report shows Chinese manufacturers building smart glasses around their own mobile ecosystems and services, with products aimed primarily at domestic users rather than Western markets. US devices are coming on strong and will no doubt also offer these same basic features. Most critical is the integration of camera/sensors and AI.
Lake Austin Luxury: How a Developer Presold $500M in Real Estate with VR. VR is often theorized as a good sales tool for consumers to visualize everything from couches to cars. But one Austin developer is actually doing it, and he pre-sold $500M in real estate. Emily Olman goes on site.
Lake Austin Luxury: How a Developer Presold $500M in Real Estate with VR
The AI Desk
Apple used WWDC 2026 to unveil Siri AI, a rebuilt assistant capable of understanding on-screen content, maintaining conversational context, searching across apps and personal data, and performing actions throughout the Apple ecosystem. The company also expanded Apple Intelligence features across Safari, Messages, Mail, Photos, and other applications. iOS 27 introduces refinements to the Liquid Glass interface, additional parental controls, AI-assisted photo editing tools, and updates to password management and call handling. macOS 27 “Golden Gate” integrates Siri AI into Spotlight and extends AI capabilities across the desktop. The updates are scheduled to roll out across Apple’s operating systems later this year.
Apple’s new Siri AI has been designed to behave differently from many generative AI assistants. Speaking to The Verge, Apple’s Craig Federighi said the company intentionally avoided creating an AI companion and instead focused on a tool for completing tasks. The new Siri provides shorter, more direct responses than chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini, which often encourage extended conversations. Announced at WWDC 2026, Siri AI can understand on-screen content, maintain conversational context, search across apps and personal data, and perform actions throughout Apple’s ecosystem. It will ship with iOS 27 later this year.
Cinematic Corner
Martin Scorsese drew criticism from the Art Directors Guild after appearing in promotional materials for AI startup Black Forest Labs, where he serves as an advisor. In a video demonstrating the company’s FLUX image-generation tool, Scorsese described AI storyboarding as a way to communicate visual ideas more quickly with his creative team. The guild responded with an open letter accusing the filmmaker of “turning his back” on the artists who helped create his films and called his endorsement of generative AI “a betrayal of the collaborative nature of cinema.”
Lionsgate has expanded its relationship with Runway by taking an equity stake in the AI video company and launching a joint development program focused on AI-generated series and new intellectual property. The move follows a 2024 partnership that envisioned AI models trained on Lionsgate’s film and television library. Since then, both companies have acknowledged that fully automated content creation proved more difficult than early expectations suggested. The new effort places human creators at the center of the process, using AI tools to develop short-form projects based on Lionsgate franchises and original concepts. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Vertical Microstreaming App Vigloo Introduces AI answer to F1. South Korean microdrama platform Vigloo has released Final Lap: Love & Betrayal, an AI-produced racing drama completed in six weeks. Vigloo received an $86 million investment from game publisher Krafton in 2024 and has been aggressively expanding into the US. Vigloo says U.S. monthly active users increased fivefold after its American launch. US viewers generate roughly half of its revenue. Vigloo says it plans to double production and expand operations in Los Angeles. Racing stories are typically expensive because of vehicles, locations, stunts, and production logistics, but using AI made the production possible.
AI Filmmaker PJ Ace PJ Ace Announces New Gen-AI Feature, Nexus, Wet Markets of Kafar The filmmaker calls the production a “hybrid feature film.” The trailer, which he says was made by three people in two weeks, presents a glimpse into the dangerous trade of mythical creatures in Kafar. As a mysterious figure navigates the brutal markets searching for rare specimens, dark legends of a witch surface, threatening the delicate balance of this harsh, monster-filled world. The trailer was made with Dreamina AI using Octo and Seedance 2.0.
Spatial Audio
This column has a companion, the AI/XR Podcast, hosted by its author, Charlie Fink; Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive and futurist for Paramount and Fox; and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap and Synthbee AI.
Our latest episode featured Augmented World Expo co-founder and CEO Ori Inbar. He’ll be sharing a preview of the show, which kicks off on Monday (see episode below)
This week, our guest is Peter Diamandis. Named by Fortune as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders, Peter H. Diamandis, MD is a pioneer in innovation, longevity, and exponential technologies. He is the Founder and Executive Chairman of XPRIZE Foundation, which has launched over $600 million in competitions driving more than $10 billion in research and development across space, health, robotics, climate, quantum and AI. Peter also co-founded Singularity University, Link-Exponential Ventures, BOLD Capital Partners, and multiple companies focused on extending human healthspan and accelerating technological progress.
Episodes drop on Tuesdays, and you can find them on podcasting platforms Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.
Charlie Fink is the producer and co-host of the AIXR Podcast and teaches at Chapman University and ASU. Fink is the producer of the vertical gen AI social media series, “Linda’s Last Podcast” (2026) and serves as CEO of Cinemation.AI, an AI animation studio he co-founded with film director Rob Minkoff, whose vertical anime series, Speed Queen, is in pre-production. He is the author of the critically acclaimed AR-enabled books Charlie Fink’s Metaverse (2017), Convergence, Or How the World Will Be Painted With Data (2019), and the upcoming AI, The End of Hollywood, and What Comes Next.
Header image credit: Bangyu Wang on Unsplash