Apple's new Vision Pro headset can scan a user's face and use advanced machine learning to create a photorealistic "Persona" of them for video calls. And in a future visionOS update, these avatars will become even more realistic.
Spatial Persona on Vision Pro
In its Platforms State of the Union video for developers this week, Apple announced that it is working on "Spatial Personas" that will allow Vision Pro users to "break out of the familiar FaceTime tile and feel more present, like they are gathered in the same physical space." Spatial Personas will have a transparent background and be able to display more movement and body language for a more lifelike experience.
A regular Persona on Vision Pro
Spatial Personas will be available on FaceTime calls, including for SharePlay sessions.
"In a SharePlay session, Spatial Personas let you feel present with others in a way technology has never enabled before," said Apple, in a related WWDC video. "You can look your friends in the eye, express yourself naturally with movement and body language, and best of all, enjoy a shared activity together using your app."
Apple said a developer preview of Spatial Personas will be available later this year, but it did not indicate when the feature will be publicly released. Vision Pro does not launch until early 2024 in the U.S. and will be priced at $3,499.
Recent layoffs of Apple employees working on the Vision Pro were broader than previously thought, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
Last month, Gurman said that Apple cut around 100 jobs from the Vision Products Group, with those cuts centered on the headset's gaming and immersive video teams. Gurman now says the layoffs also reached Vision Pro staff across the rest of the company, including ...
Wednesday September 9, 2026 12:06 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today seeded the release candidate versions of watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and tvOS 27 to developers and public beta testers. The release candidates are the final versions of the updates that will be seeded to the public as long as no final bugs are found during this last round of testing.
The updates can be installed through the Software Update section in the Settings app on each...
Wednesday September 16, 2026 10:12 am PDT by Juli Clover
Alongside new betas of iOS 27.2, iPadOS 27.2, and macOS Golden Gate 27.2, Apple has released the first betas of watchOS 27.2, tvOS 27.2, and visionOS 27.2. The betas come two days after the 27.0 software updates were released.
Registered developers can download the betas through the Settings app on each device.
Two new Apple Intelligence features are coming to the Apple Watch Series 12...
By all means let’s combine “Spatial Personas” with “Personal Voice” and then our AI-generated images and sounds can just talk to each other over FaceTime long after we’re dead.
This is an impressive forward-thinking technology but I'm not a fan of 3D Spatial Personas'. It just looks creepy. No matter who it's going to be. It will always remind me of Zuckerberg.
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