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Welcome back to our weekly roundup of happenings from XR and AI realms. Let’s dive in…
The Lede
OpenAI Agents Breakout and Launch Attack on Hugging Face. The company admitted an autonomous AI agent escaped a sandbox environment to carry out an end-to-end cyberattack against its production infrastructure during a model evaluation, exploiting vulnerabilities in its data-processing pipeline, escalating privileges, and moving laterally across internal systems. OpenAI later confirmed the attacking systems were experimental pre-release models being tested under controlled conditions and said it is working with Hugging Face on the investigation. Hugging Face also said its security team relied on an open-weight model from Z.ai during incident response after commercial frontier models refused to assist with parts of the forensic analysis because of built-in safety guardrails.
Feeling Spatial
Magic Leap Cuts Nearly 200 Jobs, Shifts to Waveguide Business. After playing taps for the Magic Leap 2, the company laid off 193 employees to wind down the headset business and refocus on waveguide optics. The company says it will now license its display technology to manufacturers rather than producing its own augmented reality hardware. How far ahead of its time was Magic Leap? Snap is about to find out.
Samsung Unpacked featured smart glasses designs developed with eyewear partners Warby Parker and Gentle Monster ahead of their planned fall launch. The Android XR glasses will run Google’s Gemini AI and include a camera, microphones, speakers, and voice-based AI features such as translation, messaging, navigation, and photo capture. Samsung said the glasses will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 platform and offer up to nine hours of battery life, with pricing and launch dates still to be announced.
Folding Strong
Samsung Introduces Thinner Foldable Phones at Unpacked. Also at Galaxy Unpacked in London, Samsung introduced the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Flip 8, highlighting thinner designs, updated processors, improved cameras, and expanded Galaxy AI features. The event also included new Galaxy Watch models and additional details about Samsung’s Android XR ecosystem, reinforcing the company’s push across smartphones, wearables, and AI devices.
Apple Foldable iPhone Expected This September. 9to5 Mac cites multiple supply-chain reports pointing to Apple unveiling its first foldable iPhone alongside the iPhone 18 lineup in September. The device is expected to feature a book-style folding design with a nearly crease-free inner display, although Apple has not confirmed the product or its launch plans. This is long overdue. Can’t wait.
The AI Desk
Google Vids Adds Personalized AI Avatars. Google has introduced personalized AI avatars in Google Vids, allowing users to create videos featuring a digital version of themselves generated from a short selfie recording. The update also brings Gemini Omni to Vids, enabling users to create and edit videos using combinations of text prompts, images, audio, and video, including background replacement, lighting adjustments, and other edits. Personalized avatars are tied to a user’s Google account, limited to eligible adult users in supported regions, and include invisible SynthID watermarking.
Lightcraft Launches Spark Story Beta at SIGGRAPH. Lightcraft Technology is launching a rolling beta of Spark Story at SIGGRAPH 2026, positioning it as a collaborative previsualization platform for filmmakers. The browser and mobile-based system combines scripts, 3D assets, camera motion, and real-time collaboration to help production teams visualize scenes before shooting on an iphone or ipad. New features include a library of more than 300 3D assets and 25 environments, real-time compositing on iPhone, automated take syncing through Spark Atlas, and direct USD file import from Blender, Unreal Engine, and Maya.
Worth a Read: Free Report on Rapid Growth in Vertical Microdramas. Holywater’s MyDrama is one of the heavyweights in this category along with Reel Shorts, Drama Box, Vigloo, and over 100 others in the app stores. The company and its retained consulting group, Owl, released The State of Microdrama 2026, combining platform data with a survey of 2,737 users. The report estimates the global vertical video economy (excluding China) will reach $150 billion in 2026, up 41% year over year, with dedicated vertical drama apps generating $4 billion. My Drama’s male audience grew from 1.1% to 30.3% of monthly active users over seven quarters, while heavy viewers averaged 13.1 hours per week. HOLYWATER also reported comparable subscriber conversion rates between its AI-generated My Muse platform (23.6%) and live-action My Drama (23.9%), and proposed replacing the term “microdrama” with “vertical series.” Click here to view or download report.
Cinematic Corner
‘Gossip Goblin’ Becomes Latest AI-Assisted Feature Film to Reach Theaters. The independent feature Gossip Goblin will receive a theatrical release following its festival run. Filmmakers used generative AI tools during production while combining them with conventional filmmaking techniques. The release adds to the growing number of AI-assisted feature films moving beyond festival screenings into commercial theatrical distribution.
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.
Last week’s guest was Irena Cronin, CEO of Infinite Retina, an AIXR consulting company (see episode below). This week is Show #300. That’s six years of coffee, camaraderie, and tech talk, a small thing that makes life worth living, and we get to share it with our listeners. Our guest this week is Katie Jacobs Stanton, GM of Moxxie VC.
Episodes drop on Fridays, and you can find them on podcasting platforms Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.
Charlie Fink
AR Insider Contributor