The AI XR Podcast

Edward Saatchi has been building at the frontier of AI storytelling for a decade—from Oculus Story Studios to Fable (where his AI character Lucy made her own films at Sundance) to his current venture, Amazon-backed Showrunner. His thesis is provocative: AI-generated content is stuck in a four-year rut of short-form experiments with no commercial marketplace, no monetization path, and no artistic value. Creators are working solo, making 10-second clips that can't compete with Rick and Morty or Netflix originals. The solution? Band together, make features and TV shows, and build platforms where creators get paid every time someone remixes their work.
Edward's most audacious project proves the point: reconstructing Orson Welles' lost masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons (44 minutes destroyed by studio cuts in 1942), using motion-capture actors and AI to seamlessly restore what was erased. The irony is intentional—it's a film about technology destroying beauty, restored by technology. Edward's approach isn't text-to-video slop. It's human performance driving AI synthesis: hire stage actors, capture their performances, use the original cutting continuity as a blueprint, and let AI fill the gaps. The result is cinema-quality work that would cost $100 million traditionally but costs $10 million with AI assistance.
In AI XR News This Week:
Amazon announces 16,000 layoffs (mostly middle management) while ramping robotics—replacing humans with machines in warehouses. Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores close after years of investment; the self-checkout convenience experiment dies. Snap spins off Spectacles AR glasses into a separate business, signaling lack of cash or confidence. Apple and OpenAI both developing AI wearables to launch in 2027, powered by Gemini and Google AI. Google launches Project Genie, a generative AI model that creates fully interactive 3D game worlds you can navigate and remix in real time. Walkabout Mini Golf (one of the 10 most popular Quest apps) lays off half its staff. Atlas V, the acclaimed French VR studio behind Spheres and Battle Scar, pivots to location-based entertainment. Darren Aronofsky launches an AI animated series on YouTube called On This Day.
Key Moments Timestamps:
[00:05:00] Amazon's 16,000 layoffs paired with robotics expansion; the canary in the coal mine for white-collar work
[00:06:00] Amazon Go/Fresh failure: humans reject automated futures when given the choice
[00:07:14] Snap spinning off Spectacles; Ted's thesis on AR glasses remaining "exotic," not mainstream
[00:10:00] Apple wearables running Gemini + Google AI; the winning formula for wearable AI domination
[00:12:48] Walkabout Mini Golf layoffs and Atlas V's pivot; VR right-sizing continues
[00:15:25] Google Genie: generative 3D worlds, playable and remixable in real time; Epic should be scared
[00:19:11] Edward Saatchi joins: the state of AI video and why there's no marketplace after 4 years
[00:22:00] Edward's concern: AI content is "derivative but worse" with no commercial value
[00:28:00] The marketplace problem: no buyers, no revenue, no sustainability for creators
[00:34:00] Ted's thesis: AI is quietly disrupting VFX and screenwriting behind the scenes
[00:44:00] Critters: the proof-of-concept for AI-assisted theatrical animation ($10M vs. $100M traditionally)
[00:49:00] Showrunner's business model: creators earn money every time someone remixes their show
[00:52:00] The Magnificent Ambersons project: restoring Orson Welles' lost masterpiece with AI
Edward makes a case that reads like a manifesto: AI's killer app isn't making derivative work faster or cheaper. It's remix, interactivity, and personalization at scale—letting audiences co-create with AI while creators get paid. His challenge to the industry: hold yourself to "derivative but better" (can you make a better Simpsons episode than the last 15 seasons?) or "original and good" (something from a non-human intelligence's perspective). Until creators band together to make features and TV shows with commercial value, AI video will remain stuck in the trough of disillusionment.
This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.
Listen to the full episode and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, entertainment, and the future of interactive media. Watch on YouTube.

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What happens when you can transform yourself into any character, in any world, in real time, while streaming live? Dean Leitersdorf is the CEO and co-founder of Decart, an Israeli AI company that just cracked the code on real-time generative video. Within a week of launching at TwitchCon, Twitch streamers were making thousands of dollars per hour letting their audiences morph them into cartoon characters, fantasy worlds, and entirely new realities—live, on stream, for three dollars per hour of AI processing.
Dean's insight: the next wave of AI doesn't just make video generation faster or cheaper. It makes it interactive. Creators can now edit themselves, their backgrounds, and entire environments on the fly during Zoom calls, live streams, or gaming sessions. Decart runs this at roughly 100x cheaper than competitors and is targeting another 100x cost reduction over the next year to reach YouTube-level pricing (cents per hour instead of dollars). That shift unlocks new markets—gaming mods, consumer filters, XR glasses, and eventually robotics training in photorealistic simulated worlds.
News: Humans&, a 3-month-old AI lab founded by researchers from Anthropic, Google, and X AI, raises $480 million at a $4 billion valuation based almost entirely on founder pedigree. Xreal sues Viture for patent infringement in bird bath optics, echoing the very lawsuit Magic Leap filed against Xreal years ago—a cycle of irony layered with allegations of trade secret theft and China-based IP evasion. OpenAI discloses $20 billion in revenue but rumored $50–60 billion in annual operating expenses, raising questions about path to profitability. TikTok's US operations close under Oracle's stewardship, and a new vertical drama app called Pinedrama launches. ElevenLabs launches music generation, competing with Suno and Udio.
Key Moments Timestamps:
[00:20:30] Dean's background: Israeli tech ecosystem, the Technion, and building a team of 0.001 percenters
[00:22:00] The real-time video demo: transforming Dean into a cartoon character, live, during the podcast
[00:26:30] Decart's competitive advantage: 100x cheaper than competitors, targeting another 100x reduction
[00:28:00] TwitchCon success: streamers making $2,000/hour letting audiences control real-time transformations
[00:31:00] Exit strategy or go-it-alone: why Decart believes foundational model owners capture the market
[00:40:00] XR and robotics use cases: world reshaping, robot training simulations, AR glasses at 6K/120fps
[00:48:30] Culture and talent: renting 34 apartments next to the office so engineers live two minutes away
[00:55:00] The secret sauce: synthetic data from game engines beats internet-scale scraping
Dean explains why Snap Camera's 10-year-old integration into stadium kiss cams proves the market is ready for the next evolution, how world models will power the next generation of XR glasses, and why the bottleneck shifts from rendering to semantics—making sure a virtual car doesn't block a real-world foot. Decart is building the foundation. The ecosystem will sprout on top.
This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.
Listen to the full episode and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, XR, and the future of human-computer interaction.

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What happens when someone who grew up in the Lucasfilm Games golden era decides that today’s AI tools are failing creatives? Mike Levine has spent more than 30 years building at the intersection of games, XR, VFX, and interactive storytelling—and his verdict is clear: the current AI stack is a fragmented, overcomplicated mess that turns directors into prompt engineers.
Mike started as a tester at Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts), working his way into the art department on titles like Sam & Max and The Dig before helping ship live-action Star Wars games such as Rebel Assault and Jedi Knight II. He later built rotoscoping tools used across the VFX industry, collaborated with ILM and Pixar, experimented with mobile AR games for Hasbro and HoloLens, and dipped into crypto gaming—before finally co-founding MovieFlow (now FilmSpark), an AI-native production platform designed so that filmmakers, agencies, and showrunners can move from script to screen without needing a computer science degree.
The AI XR news you should know: Apple taps Google Gemini to power Siri, acknowledging that building world-class LLMs in-house makes little financial sense. Meta cuts 10% of Reality Labs, right-sizing its VR bets while pivoting toward wearables. Xreal raises another $100M amid questions about Chinese state influence and data flows. Higgs Field lands $80M at a $1.3B valuation for AI cinematography tools that many filmmakers still find unreliable. Wikipedia signs licensing deals with major AI companies after years of being scraped for free. OpenAI invests $252M in Sam Altman–backed Merge Labs, raising fresh conflict-of-interest questions.
Key Moments Timestamps:
[00:23:02] From Boston journalist-to-be to accidental hire at Lucasfilm Games
[00:26:24] The “test pit” culture at Lucas and how Nintendo experience got Mike in the door
[00:28:45] Moving into the art department, learning Photoshop from early legends, and shipping Sam & Max
[00:31:15] Live-action Star Wars games: Rebel Assault, Jedi Knight II, and convincing George Lucas
[00:34:38] Visiting Pixar with new VFX tools and recognizing the same creative “magic” as LucasArts
[00:36:24] Doug Trumbull’s influence on Mike’s sense of cinematic possibility and immersion
[00:43:27] The urinal meeting at Magic Leap and what early spatial computing got right (and wrong)
[00:49:00] Why most AI tools are “dark ages” for filmmakers: node graphs, 10+ subscriptions, no story view
[00:51:00] Building MovieFlow/FilmSpark: story-first, timeline-based AI production for long-form and vertical shows
[00:53:00] The Neighborhood Podcast: a 90-second vertical murder mystery as proof-of-concept for AI-native series
When humans can generate shots, scenes, and even entire episodes in minutes, the bottleneck shifts from production to vision. Mike argues that the winning AI tools will be the ones that let directors see their whole story, maintain continuity, and iterate fast—without ever feeling like they left the edit bay for a dev console. His vertical drama collaboration with Charlie, The Neighborhood Podcast, is an early look at what happens when narrative craft meets AI-native pipelines instead of fighting them.
This episode is brought to you by Zapar creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.
Watch the full episode on YouTube and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for weekly conversations with the people building the future of AI, XR, and interactive media.
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Dean Takahashi is the dean of tech writers and a 25-year veteran correspondent covering consumer electronics, gaming, and emerging technology for GamesBeat. He's covered every major tech transition—from mobile's rise to VR's boom-and-bust cycles to the current AI explosion—with a skeptical eye and a talent for finding the human story beneath the hype. This is his fifth appearance on the AI XR Podcast.
For CES 2026, Dean walked the floors across the Convention Center, the Venetian Expo Center (Eureka Park), Pepcom, and Showstoppers, emerging with a clear reading: China has decisively shifted from periphery to center stage in consumer electronics manufacturing, American incumbents are pulling back and rethinking their booth strategy, and the economics of CES itself are in transition. Robotics companies are moving from prototype to commercial faster than expected—but they still can't answer basic questions about pricing and labor displacement.
News: Sony cuts its booth to demo an electric car instead of TVs. Samsung skips the show floor entirely for the first time. Nvidia takes over the Fontainebleau to showcase its role in robotics enablement. Lenovo dominates the Sphere with a Gwen Stefani concert. Chinese robotics companies proliferate with laundry folders, latte makers, and toilet-cleaning units. Roomba files for bankruptcy; Chinese competitors take over the robotic vacuum market.
Key Moments:
[00:01:23] Dean receives his virtual green jacket as a five-time returning guest and Charlie thanks him for his insights
[00:03:00] China takeover at CES: TCL dominates Central Hall, ROED owns the XR booth, robotics companies fill the floor
[00:06:00] Nvidia's Fontainebleau takeover and the "chest-pumping" show of force; why scale messaging still matters
[00:14:18] The robotics explosion explained: Nvidia's digital twins, Cosmos world models, and synthetic testing accelerate time-to-market
[00:19:00] The pricing problem: robotics companies won't answer how much their products cost; the minimum wage rental model doesn't translate globally
When American companies built the show, CES reflected American manufacturing dominance. Now that China manufactures most consumer electronics, CES reflects that shift—and the implications ripple through labor, supply chains, and where the next epicenter of innovation will be. Dean, Charlie, and Ted grapple with what CES 2026 signals about global manufacturing advantage and why the geography of tech matters more than we think.
This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.
Listen to the full post-CES debrief and subscribe for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, XR, and consumer technology.
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Gary Shapiro has spent decades at the center of the global consumer technology industry, leading the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and building CES into one of the most important stages for innovation, policy, and deal-making on the planet.
In this first episode of 2026, Gary joins Charlie, Rony, and Ted to preview CES, unpack the explosion of AI across every category, and deliver unusually blunt takes on tariffs, China, manufacturing, and U.S. innovation policy. He explains how CES has evolved from a TV-and-gadgets show into a global platform where boards meet, standards are set, and policymakers, chip designers, robotics firms, and health-tech startups all collide.
In the News: Before Gary joins, the hosts break down Nvidia’s $20 billion “not-a-deal” with Singapore’s Groq, the stake in Intel, and what that combo might signal about the edge of the GPU bubble and the shift toward inference compute, x86, and U.S. industrial policy. They also dig into Netflix’s acquisition of Ready Player Me and what it suggests about a Netflix metaverse and location-based entertainment strategy, plus Starlink’s rapid growth and an onslaught of “AI everything” products ahead of CES.
Gary walks through new features at this year’s show: CES Foundry at the Fontainebleau for AI and quantum, expanded tracks on manufacturing, wearables, women’s health, and accessibility, plus an AI-powered show app already fielding thousands of questions (top query: where to pick up badges).
He also talks candidly about his biggest concern—that fragmented state-level AI regulation (1,200+ state bills in 2025) will crush startups while big players shrug—and why he believes federal standards via NIST are the only realistic path. The discussion ranges from AI-driven healthcare and precision agriculture to robotics, demographics, labor culture, global supply chains, and what CES might look like in 2056.
5 Key Takeaways from Gary:
AI is now the spine of CES. CES 2026 centers on AI as infrastructure: CES Foundry at the Fontainebleau for AI + quantum, AI training tracks for strategy, implementation, agentic AI, and AI-driven marketing, and an AI-powered app helping attendees navigate the show.
Fragmented state AI laws are an existential risk for startups. Over 1,200 state AI bills in 2025—including proposals to criminalize agentic AI counseling—could create a compliance maze only large incumbents can survive, which is why Gary argues for federal standards via NIST.
Wearables are becoming systems, not gadgets. Oura rings, wrist devices, body sensors, and subdermal glucose monitors are starting to be designed as interoperable families of devices, with partnerships emerging to combine data into unified health services.
Robotics is breaking out of the industrial niche. CES will showcase the largest robotics presence yet, moving beyond factory arms and drones to humanoids, logistics, social companions, and applied AI systems across sectors.
Tariffs, alliances, and AI will reshape manufacturing. Gary is skeptical of “Fortress USA” strategies that try to onshore everything, pointing instead to allied reshoring (Latin America, Europe, Japan, South Korea) and the long-term role of AI-powered robotics in changing labor economics and global supply chains.

This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Whether you’re a developer, designer, or just getting started, start building smarter at mattercraft.io.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.