AI's Role in Enhancing Augmented Reality Experiences – with Sven Brunner | S3 E48

Sven: 1:09

We talk a lot especially also when with AI a lot about replacing people right, it's taking our jobs away and interest and so on, and I think it's always nice to also look at examples where you can actually have a positive impact on people or on your livelihood.

Joeri: 1:24

Hello, everyone, welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm excited to have a new guest on the show, with Roots in Switzerland. Hi Sven, how are you doing?

Sven: 1:42

I'm doing well. Hi Joeri, Thank you for having me.

Joeri: 1:46

I'm excited for this episode. Sven Guys, if you don't know Sven Brunner, he's a dynamic co-founder and CEO of Sphere and he's at the forefront of revolutionizing how the world connects and works with augmented reality. So, Sven, welcome to the show. Can you share with us the story behind Sphere and what inspired you to integrate AI with augmented Reality in such a unique way?

Sven: 2:15

Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, the story behind Sphere is a long one We've already been in it for quite a few years and a very eventful one. I would say we have really been at the when really augmented reality was really starting to take off in the enterprise. That's around the time we started in 2017. That was around the time when, for the audience, we know a bit of the augmented reality.

Sven: 2:36

History was when HoloLens 1, the Microsoft device, was announced or released, which was the first true spatial computing device, meaning that it was able to map the surroundings of the user, the physical world around the user, and give developers the ability to tap into that and then anchor content to the physical world. And that was for me. I saw that, that's as I was still in college back then and I saw the announcement of that device live. It was a live stream. They teased that they were going to announce something big and I remember watching it and for me, it was like that was the moment I have to do something with this technology.

Sven: 3:13

I was always been a lifelong sci-fi fan. I already knew at the end of college I wanted to create my own business and that was, for me, the eye-opener. It had to be this. I was so fascinated by this technology, even though what they showed on stage was very primitive, still very simple, like a person sitting at home watching like a TV basically virtual TV but I immediately knew that this could really change how we especially communicate and collaborate in the enterprise sector.

Sven: 3:44

I've always been more interested in the enterprise sector. There's more something that comes natural to me. For example, I'm not a social media user at all. I don't think I would really understand the trends from consumer products or consumer software, but the enterprise was something that I always felt very close to and that was the starting point, I would say. Then we started with that mission. I would still say that the mission is still the very same since we started really to enhance, facilitate collaboration, really bring it to the next level or revolutionize it, as you said in the intro, and lately the AI angle came actually later. So we started as an AR augmented reality company. I'm going to throw out some acronyms. You probably know that there is XR, AR, VR and so on, interchangeably.

Joeri: 4:33

But that's maybe interesting for the audience. Of course, I'm also interested because all these different terms, are they the same? How are they different? AR, VR, XR maybe that's also interesting to explain that in your story.

Sven: 4:48

Yes, exactly. So, yeah, that's a good point and, frankly, some of them are not even used consistently the same among different people. So initially, I would say the very traditional two terms were they're easy to separate as VR meaning virtual reality, and AR meaning augmented reality, and the difference was virtual reality. Most people are familiar with that from gaming or entertainment. You're fully immersed in the virtual world, hence virtual reality. You don't see your physical world anymore. You basically have a screen in front of your eyes. You're in the virtual world. Now, augmented reality is basically just projecting digital content Into the physical world. So you still see your physical world and you just see basically holograms. Right, maybe I have seen in the Star Wars or something like that we project a hologram into your field of view. Now, these are easy to separate.

Sven: 5:40

Then the the next term that was like tossed around was MR mixed reality which was a horribly ill-defined term. Initially, microsoft used it to describe, actually, both their AR and VR headsets, which confused people outlaw and it was never really Probably defined. But then XR came around Extended Reality as an umbrella term for kind of everything, because people were like always AR slash VR, slash MR. And then I were like, okay, let's, let's use XR, which is not the most common one, although Apple now heavily uses the term spatial computing, which sometimes people also use.

Sven: 6:19

Sometimes people also make a distinction between AR augmented reality and MR mixed reality by its ability to incorporate the physical world. So some people define AR as Just a projection in front of you with no relation to the physical world. So you just see it, and mixed reality or spatial computing really, then the ability to, let's say, I have a water bottle, a hologram of a water bottle is just not, it's not floating in air. I place it on my desk, or I have a 3D model and place it on the floor, things like that. But again, this is not even fully defined, but there's a lot of terms toss around. I try always to use it the right way, but even I probably so I yeah.

Joeri: 7:01

But it's interesting for our listeners because they maybe I also hear that I was actually Preparing also blog article about you. What does it know exactly? Because you find different people saying different things. And then I've been organizing myself already events in what we call the Metaverse that's kind Another term and then, when I think at the matter, first I teach about the immersive aspect, that's one. But yeah, of course other people talk about spatial computing, about Virtual Reality, and there are of course, different definitions of the metaverse too. But how would you then define that, comparing to virtual reality, for instance?

Sven: 7:39

at the Metaverse. Yeah, yeah, that's also a good one, and there's even like between there's people who define the metaverse as more. I think one hark, soccer, bergen, meta laid out, right, this, basically it's almost like another world where you dive into, fully removed from our physical world. That's one definition and we have actually come to see that a lot of people don't like that. That's also why I think a lot of the backlash and that the negative connotation with metaverse came from, because a lot of people are like I don't necessarily want to leave this world behind and just go some somewhere else. Right, and that's class, this interpretation.

Sven: 8:12

Another interpretation is something more in our also especially the enterprise world. It's more some people also call it than that the business or industrial metaverse or something like that. But it's much more about basically an interconnected World where you have an interplay between physical and virtual Assets or entities. Right, digital twin is a very big topic when it comes to the industrial or business metaverse. Right now you have a physical machine and you also have this representation in the industrial metaverse and in air quotes. We basically didn't have the same. You control that machine in the same way, right, it's.

Sven: 8:46

It's more in more, incorporating also the physical aspects of our world. But again, even there, it's not we. I saw a very that was like a couple years ago when the term was really like taking off. There was a very funny me that went around I think also linked in where people listed 20 different businesses from like crypto and AR, and then PR, gaming and whatever, and then now term in 2021. Just all everything is Metaverse is during time everyone was in the metaverse, as now everyone is doing generative AI. Right. That's maybe we could come full circle. Always is also a bit of response why we incorporate AI more is a nice.

Sven: 9:24

Response to that. But we also want to make sure it's not give me right. A lot. What you're seeing right now, I think, in in AI is very give me key. Sometimes, right, it's just like you just got half an AI angle and we actually looked at it. We actually had that for a long time in mind to incorporate AI into XR or AR, but it was just not really there yet from a technology perspective, right, which obviously changed now since since the last, early last year, right, I would really took off. But we always believe that, first of all, AI is, for me at least, a very foundational technology, right, similar to, let's say, the internet. Right, it's, but you need to incorporate or apply it to something is on its own until we reach, then, artificial general intelligence, but until then it's on its own, it's not really useful until you integrate it to something, right, whatever that is right, could be a neighbor. We're in this podcast. There's a automatic note-taking tool rubbing it back for it.

Joeri: 10:21

It could, but there is some AI involved actually in the tool that I will be using because it, as you say, it's all comes together. Ai itself is not useful, but if you combine it and the podcast is called Web3 CMOsTories podcast, but then for me also, web3 is an umbrella term in my definition of blockchain, but also metaverse and AI, and it's funny, you say, yeah, in 2022 it was all about metaverse, now it is AI. 2021 it was all about NFTs. So there is like this hype word every time, but all these technologies come together and therefore I find it really interesting. It's also invited you because AI and VR and so coming together. But now for a company now you said you all about companies now listening to this, how maybe you can share a story on, example, how a business could use VR for their clients, for themselves?

Sven: 11:15

Yeah, absolutely yeah, we have actually a few. So in general maybe also to give the audience a better idea about the solution is about you can really think of it as a, in its essence, we market and call it a spatial collaboration solution, meaning that you have the ability in our solution to communicate and collaborate in a shared virtual space. Meaning that, whether you have a headset or your support smartphones, you can put them on, go into a sphere session and then collaborate in real time, but you still see your physical world if you're in an AR headset on, or even the new pass through ones the ElvishPro just will be released in a few days, actually the MetaCorrect 3, all these devices also pass through, which is also an augmented reality experience and you can basically place content into your physical world and everything is shared in real time. So everything, let's say, if you need to be the same virtual shared room, then if you place something in the middle of our room and move it around, you see it at the exact same time. I can scale it, I can make it bigger, smaller, you can do it with purse or people in the same physical location. Then everything is shared in real time, also in the exact same location, right. So physically I see it at the same place. But also, if someone joins remotely, they're visualized as an avatar with a very sophisticated avatar system. We synchronize eye blinking, the mouth movement, head movement, how your arms move, so to really give you a life like experience, feeling that you're working with your colleague as if they were the same room with you, but even though they're like thousands of kilometers away and it's also great for hybrid right you can have people in the same room and remote and they can all work and collaborate together.

Sven: 12:51

So give you a few applied examples. So one, for example, is we have a lot of customers in the automotive industry and they also use that for design review. So you can think about that. When they build prototype cars, they're not like, I don't know, from zero to 100, they have to car right. It's a long process to build these new car right, new car platform, and there's a lot of incorpor or there's certain stages and phases right In every phase. Then initially you have maybe the chassis and then you put the doors on, and I'm not an expert in that, but usually what they would do is actually would create foam models, physical foam models, to test that out right, to see how the dimensions work and so on, and some of our customers replace that fully with now our solution so you have, and you can combine it right, maybe you've already built something physically. It's in the middle of the room. You go there and you overlay that with your latest 3D, your latest cat designs, right, you have maybe the latest door and you just virtually then overlay that or anchor it to the physical car and you can do it collaboratively, like five, six people. They all discuss it. You can bring a colleague in who's not even on site and you can iterate much faster right, these foam models. Initially I also thought that's like something easy and quick. It actually takes a lot of money and time to create those huge benefit for them much faster. They don't need to create new material right, it's not something that you do print or create physically anymore. So that's the one case.

Sven: 14:16

Another one is something to give you an example in the pharma industry. It's about training and so basically you can think about they have very complex procedures, machine maintenance or just to set up these large machines that produce them, the drugs and the ingredients for the drugs and what they use. Our solution for is basically you have an instructor that have a headset on and they guide then a class of students or trainees through these procedures and show them how to do it. So you have the physical machine and virtual content on top of it that guides these people through it step by step, and you have to instruct right. Everyone sees the same thing, they can explain it, they can show there's 3D model, there's animations and so on. So that's, for example, another case in the pharma industry, maybe the last one I wanna mention because it's one of my favorite cases that we can help solve, although it's not I always have to be careful how I phrase that, because it's not a good thing that these things exist, but it's nice that we can help.

Sven: 15:11

So we work with a hospital group in Germany at a hospital, at Clinic Heidelberg, and we support them in combating child violence or violence against children. So it's how this is organized. And what's also new for me is that apparently it's really tricky to assess if a child has been abused or not. What happens apparently a lot is like children come in and also be in the middle of the night to a local doctor and they have injuries and then basically the local doctor needs to make a call. Is it abuse? Then they obviously cannot send the child back to the parents because it's being abused. But you definitely also don't wanna accuse someone of abusing their child. Even maybe the child just fell or were playing with a friend or whatever.

Sven: 15:56

And what then usually happens?

Sven: 15:58

These local doctors cannot make that call. It's you need a specialist. And they then sometimes have to drive from the central clinic hundreds of kilometers in the middle of the night sometimes to assess the patient to the child, right, which is gonna be very traumatic for everyone involved the parents, the child then need to wait for hours in a tough call and so on. And what we're doing now they're using our solution for, specifically, the local doctor puts a headset on and basically streams their field of view to a specialist who's back at the central clinic. They still need to get up if it's in the middle of the night, but they don't have to physically go there anymore, so they basically then see through the eyes of the local doctor. They together can ex-emind the patient and reach a conclusion of what it is about.

Sven: 16:41

And I always really like that example, also because we talk a lot especially also when with AI a lot about replacing people. Right, it's taking our jobs away and interest and so on and I think it's always nice to also look at examples like that where you can actually have a positive impact on people, on livelihoods it's a very common experience and how technology can really enhance people's life and make life better. That's why I think a very great use case that we have that we can apply again. Not always great that we think they're so necessary in this day and age, but that's just the reality of our world.

Joeri: 17:18

Yeah, those are interesting examples because I was going to ask you why is AI coming in place? And this is really a good example. You also mentioned a few times headset and that you can, because I the other day I did a Metaverse event, but, depending on the technology used, the avatars are quite. They're just standing and they're not moving. But if you use a headset, then there is a dynamic experience. So I understand also that for most of the applications that you're talking about, you need a headset right to have the right experience.

Sven: 17:50

Yes, correct. So we do support also quite a bit traditional platform smartphones, pcs and so on, but we always for the I would say that the true immersive experience. We recommend a headset, one like unique property that our solution has for cross platform or device agnostic, meaning that our solution almost runs on all major headsets. So we support all the way from, as I mentioned before, Apple Vision Pro, metaquest 3, we support Lenovo devices, microsoft HoloLens Magically and so on. It's really a wide range of devices.

Sven: 18:24

Why do we do that? Because it's not easy for an engineer Active. If our engineers are listening, they're like yeah, no, it's very tough, but it's very, or especially in a market that we operate in where things change very quickly. New headsets come and go and we're not in a phase yet. Or, like in PCs or smartphones, you have your big players. It's an established market, things change quite frequently. And then it's very important for customers to be able to be, or be able to know that, okay, we onboard the software, we don't have to worry about like this hardware goes away or another one. This happened already like four or five times in the last few years that a hardware player, just when stopped being in the market, stopped producing their devices right, and customers were stranded, and that's something we want to address.

Sven: 19:08

Also, each of these devices have different strengths and weaknesses, right. Some of them are super light but maybe not as powerful. When it comes to the sensor suite right, how they can map the world around you or the other way around right, the super expensive ones have very good sensors, but they're expensive and maybe a bit heavier, so we also allow them. Customers to mix and match right. If you have different use cases, if you have the field technician, they maybe want the lighter device. It doesn't need to be as powerful, maybe. But if you want to design review case, I describe it before right, there you want to have high precision and you're anyways indoors, right, so that's not as important how heavy the device maybe is, or so there's different characteristics, right. But, yeah, I would always agree that the best experience you only get in a headset, but it takes time right, it's when we sell to the buffers. A lot of them also use a mix, right, we rarely see that someone like goes in and buys 50,000 headsets on day one, like that. Usually that's no.

Sven: 20:05

I can't, yeah, and that's why you want to give them the ability to, or no one should be left out. I honestly think that's an issue not just for us, for our entire industry that you almost create two classes of users or people and people who can then participate in. The people who cannot, which is always a problem, especially in companies. Where you want to have I'd say we want to support immersive collaboration and communication, and it would really go against the spirit of that if, like, half your workforce cannot even participate. So we still try to give them an as good experience as possible. On a smartphone, for example, there's also AR you have using the AR capabilities that tablet or smartphone has, but, yeah, it's never the same experience. Nevertheless, people can participate in our not just our whole or our prediction, I think the entire industry is that over time, more and more people will be in headsets.

Sven: 20:55

Right, we see a lot of movement. Especially in 2024 will probably be the year with the highest number of new devices launched. I mean just also at CES, like Sony announced a new device. There's so many players now getting into the market. Obviously Apple and we all saw, I think, they sold 150,000 units from the first weekend, so it's really we're moving really that direction, which obviously we're very happy to see, because this is what we've been waiting for six, seven years now that this is like this takeoff moment that's going to happen. But we really feel we're there now.

Joeri: 21:26

Yeah, it's exciting to hear that Apple does something. The world is watching what is happening, but if the other suppliers are also going with a bit of headsets, and then for me also it's exciting because also the story to tell to your audience. Are they aware of what VR or spatial computing could do for them, or do you need to explain them? So how does it from a marketing point of view, of course, how do people know you and how do you know how does that work to some that are interested?

Sven: 22:03

yeah, so theres two pieces of that. one is really it changed significantly, I would say. When we started in like 2017, 2018, we were basically like advocating not even our company or our product, but the technology. We're like, hey, you know actually what AR or XR can do for you? No-transcript Talk about the technology on a very high level, right, because people were familiar with it I've never heard of it or they thought it was some like gimmicky sci-fi thing that no one cared. Everyone is like oh, is that where we play the games? Like no, it's not just for games anymore.

Sven: 22:32

So there was a lot of these type of conversations and I would say it really changed, like during the pandemic, when people started to look at oh, now we really have a problem. For example, we can't travel anymore. It's really hard to collaborate now. People don't not everyone is in office anymore. Right, people were vibrated and remote and people were looking for new solutions to these type of problems and a lot of them arrived at XR. We really had a spike in peace, request for proposals, meaning that large companies actively are looking for a solution, which is always a very good sign for how mature a market is. Right, before you. Basically, we had to call these large companies like, hey guys, do you know how good this or how good this technology could be or how it could help us? And now it's the other way around. They recognize the potential and they just put out a bid, basically saying, hey, we know that technology can help us. We just want to find the best supplier, which is still obviously tough. Right, you still got to prove yourself. But we actually been quite successful in the last 12 months and plus in these RFPs, where we won a lot of them, also very large customers. We can also name them publicly. There's also that website. Some of them are companies like Pfizer, Airbus, volkswagen, micron that we were able to win as customers, and that's really the perception that people really are realizing how much this technology can do for them and maybe also how we go to market or how we were a small startup right, I didn't mention that we were less than 50 people and as a small startup, it's very important to have strong partners, and this is something we also did.

Sven: 24:11

From was always a strategy for us. We wanted to partner with some of the largest player in the space and we I think we achieved that. We were working very closely with companies like Amazon, aws, magickly, qualcomm, lenovo and so on, basically mostly on one technology. Right, we work closely because these are also the providers of the headsets, so we work very closely to make sure that our software is optimized. Also, when these devices are released, that we already have something. Also, we get usually also these devices a bit earlier, which is always Christmas for me as the third hour of our engineering team when you get unreleased devices.

Sven: 24:48

But this is also the path to market for us, because a lot of these companies have very strong ties to the largest companies in the world. Right, they can help us get into these conversations Because, as a startup, you're always fighting for credibility. Right, how do you convince a company like Airbus that they should bet on you as their supplier for XR, which is not always easy. But attaching yourself also to these partners is very important one for the credibility. But also, they can actively help you. Right, they can open doors and bring you in rooms and conversations that it would be very hard to do on your own. That's, I would say, has been proven a very good strategy for us in the past few years.

Joeri: 25:25

Well, yeah, partnerships are always good if you're a small company and then you can find these wind partnerships and actually also being on podcast hopefully can also help you. So welcome, absolutely. You're on the show because maybe there is someone listening for a beer company that said I need to reach out to Sven, and if they think that Sven and they want to reach out, you will be all. Just learn more about everything you're doing with Sphere. Where would you like to send them?

Sven: 25:53

So the best place would be our website, which is sphere. t ech so S-P-H-E-R-E. Tech T-E-C-H and there we have a lot of information, always about the company, but we also have a lot of case studies and real cases, and that's usually also what people are really interested in. So I would encourage you to go there and read through them. We also have almost for all industries we work in, we have a case study, a sample case, which is always as something we always look for. Is there real? Because when we work with other companies, are there real applications? Is it just because I think that's a big challenge?

Sven: 26:31

Still in our industry, A lot of companies are in the sometimes we call it POC hell, where you basically are just an innovation department. You do something, it's been your wheels a bit, but no one's actually going to use it productively, and I think this is something that we successfully achieved and that's something we're also very proud of that our solution actually use productively. People use it on a daily basis for their actual work, which is very satisfying and rewarding to see that it's not just something that people especially sometimes in new technologies, there's always this risk that people find it cool, but I cannot really use it, especially in the whole Web3 Metaverse. There were a lot of things, and you saw that too, right, there's a lot of projects that were just that right. People were like, okay, yeah, it's cool, but what do we do with that? Or where do we apply it to?

Joeri: 27:20

Exactly, and that's if you can show real applications that are really useful, not like these hype projects that were just people are just in there for speculation, but real life applications. That's really what makes us go forward, and but it's also making sure that you have this credibility and finding these partnerships and so on, fun. Yeah, thank you again. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show and, guys, if you listen to the show regularly, there are show notes. There is a podcast article also where you can find all the links or maybe the case studies. If your team provides it to me, it's fun, be happy to put them in there. This is also a good moment to subscribe to the show, if you haven't already subscribed, if you also think, yeah, this, what Sven said, can be really, really useful for people around you, be sure to share this episode with them and, of course, I would like to see you back next time, take care.