I'll start:
AI. VR. Humans. New medium.
Academics have been trying to predict the future of communication and it's media with incredibly open minds since the start of the 20th Century. Before then, or rather before the early modern age, such futurism wasn't a thing as much as it is now. In some societies it was almost completely non existent, such as Rome.
Hypertextual communications was heralded as a way to bring back the seamless connection of text and pictures, something lost since the printing press/typesetting became the main method of communication, with fonts more standardized. We can now see this has, in many ways, failed to materialize, due in part to the effort required.
Virtual dimensions offer a more seamless integration of picture and language than possible in other live mediums. V-Tubers can change their body at will, change their surroundings at will, change their personhood itself at will. Much like the poets of antiquity who memorized facial expressions, movements, tone of voice, and ways to say their poem, to a fine art. The experience was not compressed into a textual or recollective exercise but rather a multi-sensual highly emotive display with audience input and originality.
Something especially highlighting the impact of this massive integration of hyper-emotional media generated live for viewers is the fact a significant portion of consumers do not even speak their oshi's tongue. They use translators and, in some cases, AI.
AI is the obvious next step for virtual dimensions to utilize.
https://youtu.be/at5YMpTLl9UAI can offer auto-generated spaces fitting the mood of the stream. AI can offer real time language translation. AI can even display, in the virtual space, concepts the streamer is accessing with their speech or facial/body language. AI can offer organization of said digital space. AI can give personalized viewing experiences for those consuming their oshi.
It will likely facilitate the technology and practices allowing further integration of multiple sessions to create large scale interactable environments in virtual spaces. Such spaces allowing fans to meet other fans, furthering a sense of community and 'realness'.
Make no mistake, the poet is not going away. V-Tuber's, as humans we enjoy, will not disappear. Even when AI comes about. But the poet will regain his physical presence, his unique telling, his emotive displays, his ability to reach many, his ability to use your mental imagination to his benefit, the ability to use the collective imagination through media and reality to his own illustrative benefit. And he'll be able to reach millions at once. And he'll be able to hear every single voice at once and actually process their contents into a whole concept or communication that does not miss or ignore any voice. The days of sacrificing humanity in print, streaming, story telling, meeting people -- it's coming to an end. Ironically through the very thing feared as the end of our human elements.
