Meet Uncle Rabbit, the AI-powered conversational 3D chatbot

The big picture: Looking Glass, the holographic technology company that launched the first desktop-based holographic development kit back in 2018, introduced Twitter to their newest creation earlier last week. The company posted videos of team members conversing with Uncle Rabbit, the ChatGPT-based holographic AI with a penchant for carrots. The conversational bot comes complete with its own unique, carrot-obsessed personality that is incorporated into its responses.

The videos, posted to the Looking Glass official Twitter page as well as @nikkiccccc‘s personal page, show members of the development team having a direct conversation with the 3D holographic image of a bunny known as “Uncle Rabbit.” The prototype chatbot is designed to run on the company’s 3D holographic line of products, such as the Looking Glass Portrait display, pictured above.

“any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” ⨠p sure i’ve never said this about anything we’ve made.

meet uncle rabbit—the first conversational holographic ai being powered by #ChatGPT @OpenAI powered by @LKGGlass

(hey @DBtodomundo �’�ð¼) pic.twitter.com/WuIAsZm3Ef

— nikki �-* �’- �-* (@nikkiccccc) March 29, 2023

The technology provides similar capabilities to ChatGPT, allowing the AI to imitate or apply a specific personality or tone for use in its responses. The bot’s conversation and reactions leverage its unique character, creating a less robotic and more genuine experience for users interacting with it. And by conversation, we don’t mean “it answers questions.” Like ChatGPT, Uncle Rabbit is capable of engaging in a full-fledged conversation with you, from initial inquiry to follow on responses. It even has a sense of humor, though based on the videos, its brand of comedy is very dad-joke focused.

LIVE�”‘ from New York it’s #BunnyBanterð°�*, a Hoppy Hour comedy special, featuring Uncle Rabbit, the first-ever holographic avatar powered by @LKGGlass and @OpenAI‘s #ChatGPT#AiCommunity #Comedy #Carrots pic.twitter.com/k75AXDlwKG

— Arturo J. Real (@ArturoJReal) April 1, 2023

Looking Glass isn’t new to the 3D holographic technology space. Established in 2014, the Brooklyn and Hong-Kong-based technology shop has a full suite of tools, add-ons, and even hardware designed to support 3D holographic development. The company’s Looking Glass Core SDK allows developers to use their 3D software of choice, making it compatible with Looking Glass’ hardware. 3D developers have the ability to use multiple rendering backends such as DirectX, OpenGL, Metal, Vulkan, or WebGL in conjunction with windowing libraries such as GLFW, Qt, and SDL. The site also offers plugins for popular development and rendering solutions such as Unity, Unreal Engine, and Blender.

The possibilities for using a conversational AI in gaming, daily productivity tasks, or even for use as a virtual assistant are endless. Unfortunately, Uncle Rabbit isn’t available for users to download and engage, yet. The company has created an email sign-up page to keep interested parties informed of the tool’s progress and capabilities. And once available, the technology will still likely require one of the Looking Glass proprietary displays, a cost that can range from almost $400 to packages that cost several thousand dollars or more.