News · September 2023

How AI and VR Are Colliding to Create Change

Artificial intelligence is already working alongside virtual reality in gaming, medicine, education and training, and the two are converging fastest in one place: a conversation partner who listens and answers back.

An adult wearing a headset faces a head-and-shoulders conversation partner, backed by soft abstract light, practising a one-to-one conversation.

VR and AI, in one experience

AI is the ability of machines to make sense of information and respond to it. VR is the creation of a computer-built environment a person can stand inside.

Put together, AI makes a VR experience more responsive, and VR gives AI a place, rather than a screen, to respond in.

Both change how people take in and act on information: VR by building a space you can stand in, AI by making sense of far more data than a person can hold at once.

Where AI and VR are already meeting

Entertainment, training and therapy each have a room where a character now answers back, and these are those rooms.

Two players control a suspended shape together in a rapid-prototyping scenario, seen through the headset. — **Games and entertainment.** A character that understands what a player does, not just a fixed script, changes how a scene plays out.

A simulated university tutorial room, three students, one wearing a headset, turn toward each other mid-discussion. — **Training and education.** AI can read how a learner is doing and change the pace or the questions in response, in a VR classroom or scenario.

A support worker talks with a young man in a plain room, seen through the headset, a floating panel of replies beside them. — **Therapeutic practice.** A controlled VR scenario with an AI-driven conversation partner can support exposure and rehearsal work, with a clinician monitoring the session.

Three people gather around a table model, examining it together in mixed reality. — **Design visualisation.** AI can help shape a design from a description, then VR or mixed reality lets people walk it and judge it before anything is built.

An employee meets a remote colleague from home in a VR training scenario. — **Remote collaboration.** An AI-driven presence that understands language, tone and gesture makes a remote check-in feel closer to being in the room.

A facilitator talks through a flow diagram and sticky notes on a whiteboard while two participants, one using a wheelchair, watch from the table. — **Making sense of data.** AI can turn a large body of information into a diagram a facilitator can walk a group through, on a whiteboard or inside a VR room.

A conversation partner that talks back

At People Tech Revolution, an AI-driven character inside VR opens up practice for the conversations people find hardest.

A manager wearing a headset sits facing a simulated team member across a small table, rehearsing a performance feedback conversation. — **Feedback practice.** Practising a piece of feedback, constructive or positive, and hearing how it lands before delivering it for real.

A woman wearing a headset raises one hand mid-sentence in a room with a rust-red wall and a window onto a city. — **Presentation practice.** A safe run at a presentation, more than once, with a response to react to each time.

A practitioner rehearses a conversation beside a facilitator in an AI roleplay scenario. — **Difficult conversations.** A hard conversation with a colleague or a client, rehearsed with a character that answers differently each time.

Two people select speech tiles beside a display, shaping a phrase together. — **Language practice.** Natural back-and-forth conversation practice, with a correction or a suggestion offered in the moment.

Practising a hard conversation with a manager, one to one, seen through the headset. — **Roleplay and negotiation.** A character can be set up as a colleague or a client, so a negotiation or a conflict gets rehearsed before it happens for real.

Adapting the practice. The tone and manner of the conversation partner can be set to match a real colleague or client, so someone can practise adapting their own approach.

A remote tutor sits alone at home in a VR training scenario for education.

What has to come first

The potential is wide, and so is the responsibility. Privacy, security, inclusive design and unbiased AI have to be the priority as the two technologies come together, not an afterthought once something ships.

See how these ideas have developed into current PTR work on the AI page, or read about AI roleplay practice.

Update, August 2026. This article was first published in September 2023.

Since then, the AI-and-VR conversation partner described above has become a live PTR capability. PTR now offers AI roleplay practice, custom AI experiences and digital twins.

Want to see where AI and VR have landed since this was written?

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